Take a Bite

There I am in the kitchen last night, mixing up cinnamon muffins from a box. I silently lament, “It’s too bad I was so stressed this weekend. It would have been nice to make something.” You’re quick on the uptake; you’ve already realized that I was in fact making something at that very moment. It took me a few more minutes to realize that I am the rare person who considers making muffins from a box mix “buying muffins from the store” as opposed to making them at home, i.e., from scratch.

The light bulb goes on, and all I can do is shake my head at myself.

It reminds me of a time a few years ago when we were staying home for Christmas and didn’t have a huge crowd coming in. A neighbor asked what we were doing for Christmas, and I said we’d probably just make spaghetti. The sweet lady gave me a look—eyes narrowing, head tilting. She tentatively asked, “Spaghetti? You’re more than welcome to come over…”

I looked back her, my head tilted, puzzled eyes, and after a good 30 seconds realized what the problem was. In her mind having spaghetti for dinner meant a jar of sauce from the store. For a lot of people it’s probably one of the simplest, lowest stress meals you can prepare. It’s definitely not worthy of the celebration of Christ’s birth. What she didn’t realize is that I’m Italian. We’ve been having sauce on Christmas my entire life. It’s made from scratch. It takes at least six hours. When my mom does it, it takes the form of a lasagna capable of feeding about 30 people. There is also anti-pasto salad, garlic bread, and bowls of pork and sausage cooked in the sauce. This is followed by Christmas cookies of every description, all made from scratch, and cream puffs, also made from scratch. No one leaves the table hungry—for anything—ever again.

I feel like this topic of food has come up several times now because I keep finding myself relating to food and its preparation in ways that seem to vary—sometimes wildly—from the norm.

We spent three weeks waiting for our household goods to arrive from the other side of the state. My neighbors have been so amazing. We brought some basics with us: a 6 quart pot, a griddle, a 3 quart pot, and a colander. We also had a few spatulas, can opener, etc. There were a few things I had to buy, like a cutting board and a cookie sheet. I borrowed a set of mixing bowls from a neighbor. But still, I managed to make chicken pot pie and blueberry cobbler. We only increased our meals out when we realized we could charge them to the incompetent movers.

Is that weird? It reminds me of my grandmother, who, when they camped had my grandfather improvise an oven so she could make stuffed peppers and bake a cake. They had the most popular campsite. Kids would wander over and return to their own campsites demanding to know why they were stuck with hot dogs and beans.

That’s weird, right?

The only explanation I can provide is that I’m third generation American. It’s actually kind of crazy. There’s a single branch of my family, the Sterners, that goes back to the Revolutionary War. Everyone else came from Italy in the early part of the 20^th century. All the other great grandparents were born in Italy. My dad’s mom spent World War II in Sicily after her family was trapped there when they went back to visit. Her dad was a fascist. She worked as a translator for the Allies after Sicily was liberated. My great uncle was part of machine gun crew for the Italian army. My mom grew up living above her Italian grandparents. Grandma Miraldi spoke to her in Italian, and my mom answered in English. My dad was the secret translator for his siblings when his parents spoke Italian.

It’s a different tradition when your family’s cultural heritage is still so close. My parents both grew up on Staten Island. They went to the Italian stores; they lived practically next door to their entire families. My dad has a picture of somebody’s birthday, black and white, and around the table are bodies packed just wall to wall. He can name almost every one, and they’re just about all related to him. And if you thought that description earlier of Christmas dinner was crazy, try it at my dad’s house growing up. First you had an entire pasta meal, all the trimmings mentioned above; then you had a turkey or a ham or both; then you had fruits and nuts and cheeses; then you had dessert. It took hours. And it was like that at every holiday.

I can guarantee you that none of it was pre-prepared or store bought. Of course, that’s partially because those things didn’t exist in the 1950s, but mostly it was because that’s not how it’s done.

This isn't my actual family, but you get the idea.

I will definitely continue to laugh at myself for baking “store bought” muffins from a mix. But I’m so proud of my heritage and the skills that have come with it. H loves to cook with me, and I’m so happy to pass that knowledge on to her. Not only does it mean a chance to teach her tradition and heritage, but it also means learning to understand food and appreciate it in its many wonderful permutations. Being able to cook gives you a freedom to control your destiny, while still honoring the past.

Mom-nesia

Mom-nesia: (n) loss of a large block of interrelated memories caused by child birth.

I find myself at a bit of loose ends this morning caused by a bout of Mom-nesia. Yesterday I found a reminder in my email that I’d signed J up for Parents’ Morning Out. Surprise! When I signed him up for three or four sessions to cover my piano lessons, I thought they started next week. Here I am. No piano and no kid, because I saw the email too late in the day to cancel the reservation.

On the plus side, I’m going to get a pedicure later on. I would be using the gift certificate I got for my birthday last year, but I didn’t read it and neglected to book with one of the two people specified by the gift card. I’ll be paying for it instead.

I’m not sure if it’s sun spots or early onset dementia, but I suddenly seem to be going through a bout of serious Mom-nesia. I can’t seem to manage to organize anything properly. Yesterday I got lost driving home from Lebanon (town, not country) and ended up on my way to Indiana. The worst part is that I didn’t notice until we passed signs for Breese, IL. “Hmm,” I wondered, “I’ve never heard of that town. Where am I?” I almost missed picking H up from school because of it.

What do we do when life spirals to the brink of chaos? Well, I’m getting a pedicure. But I’m also feeling like I’m not up to snuff. I’m feeling like J is getting too many bottles, which makes me feel both like I’m a bad mom and that I’m horribly judgy because lots of babies get lots more bottles because their moms have to work and be gone. Where is the balance?

I fear I have entered a new phase of life where not only do I need to write things down to make sure they happen, I also need to cross reference, create alerts, and check in with Josh as a sanity keeper. I’m becoming my dad. (Sorry, Dad!)

While perusing in Lebanon prior to my unplanned country drive I saw a sign that said, “Moms are like buttons. They hold everything together.” Lord knows it’s the truth. When I get really frustrated I remind Josh, loudly and with a little bite, that the family wouldn’t function without me. If I don’t get myself together, we might find out how true that statement is.

Government shutdown notwithstanding, this is actually a great time in our family’s story. Josh is home EVERY night, H is increasingly independent (and back talky), J is growing so fast, and I am trying hard to make some room for myself with choir and piano. We don’t even have to attend four out of town weddings in the span of two months this year. Life is actually pretty relaxed.

Maybe that’s my problem! Not enough stress! I’m used to Josh being gone; organizing multiple cross country trips; shuttling children hither and yon; cooking, cleaning, and shopping with a baby on my back; and whistling a merry tune all the way. When faced with what many would consider a normal existence, I’m having a bit of trouble adjusting. We will file this under “First World Problems.”

I’m still going to have to make some concerted efforts to recheck appointments before scheduling babysitting, but while I’ll do so, I’ll remind myself that life could be way worse. Plus, my toes look cute.

Traveling Together

It was my anniversary on Monday. I had been planning on a funny/ironic “marriage by the numbers” post. For example, we’ve only spent three of our six anniversaries together. Or we’ve actually been a couple for almost 15 years. But then there was this number: four. As in the four states we drove across with a three-year-old and a five-month-old on our anniversary.

When you’re an Air Force family, most of your “vacation” time is spent visiting family. It’s not always strictly vacation. A lot of times you end up drying dishes, cleaning things, and sometimes helping your father-in-law reseat wrought iron railings. It’s not terribly glamorous. When that family is 14 hours away, it’s even less glamorous.

Pretty quickly you’re faced with a choice to overcome the lack of glamour and the incredibly long car trip and spend time with that family so your kids know where they came from or stay home. Josh and I both come from families who felt it was more important to connect with our roots, so it’s no surprise that we packed the kids into the car and drove a total of 16 hours straight through the long night and the 80 minutes of continuous baby wailing and the toddler tantrums. And as it turned out, we faced one more choice of spending an extra day in West Virginia with Josh’s 93-year-old grandmother and driving home on our anniversary. It might not be the choice that everyone one would make, especially not when you’ve spent so few of your previous anniversaries together.

Another thing you learn as an Air Force family is that the fact of being together is more important than where you are or when you are. When we found out that Josh would be deployed for our first anniversary, he took me to a five-star restaurant—one where men have to wear a coat or they won’t seat you—before he left. On our second anniversary when we were together, I asked him to take my gigantically pregnant self to Friendly’s for a sundae.

I hate that we’ve had so much time apart over the years of our relationship—five years of long distance, four deployments, a six month training, almost countless trips and trainings. But the silver lining to all of that is that I’ve learned that dates are not sacred. For it to be our anniversary, we don’t have to be at a five-star restaurant (though it’s nice). We don’t even have to be together physically (though that’s nice too). We just have to be together in our hearts. Because of that, it’s almost no big deal if we “celebrate” or not.

All of that to say that getting all of us home across those four states after ten days of traveling to visit family felt like an accomplishment. Not just the accomplishment of a day, but one of six years of taking it a day at a time, overcoming so many obstacles—some of them heart rending, laughing when we wanted to cry, laughing so hard we did cry, and coming out stronger and stronger because of it.

There are lots of nice things that I can say about my husband. But the compliment I want to pay him right now is that even after all those miles, I’d get back in the car with him and our children any day—no matter how many states we have to cross.

My Tootsie Valentine

As I was finally putting away Christmas cards a couple of weeks ago, I pulled out the one from my very crafty sister-in-law. I was admiring/envying her smarts at using her sweet baby’s footprint in the card when I had a brainstorm. Namely that Valentine’s Day is coming up. I’ve sent Valentine’s cards from H to her grandparents on and off. It’s a holiday or “holiday” that comes at a time when you’re fully recovered from Christmas and, in our family, a deluge of January birthdays, but you’re not yet caught up with any other holidays. A lull.

So, Valentine’s Day and feet. Well, if one foot can make a tree, then two feet can make quite a nice heart. One ink pad and a few blank cards later and I had handmade cuteness to send to some of our favorite people.

A couple of tips if you try this yourself: I did all of one foot and then all of the other. Easier to control one ink stained foot as opposed to two. Baby wipes work wonders to get the ink off once you’re done.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and all the little feet in your life.