Note: This is a personal journal entry that I decided to share publicly. There aren't any tarot cards here, but there is talk about ancestors, which is a topic that I intend to explore more as this blog expands.
I just had a little talk with my daughter, which led to her shedding a few tears. It wasn’t anything bad. As a matter of fact, sometimes when I’m having one of these talks with her, I feel like I am talking to myself—like maybe God allowed this conversation to happen so that I can hear myself aloud.
Just a little while ago, my daughter came and asked me if I was going to eat the leftover chili I prepared a few days ago. It wasn’t very good. This chili came from a brand that I had never heard of before in my life. I had it because I got it from a food pantry. For the past several months, I have been frequenting food giveaways and pantries (how I got there is a story for another day), and it has been amazing for my wallet because now I seem to have a little more gas in my car than I did when I was spending hundreds of dollars a month buying groceries for us.
This brand of canned chili was horrible. I tried to jazz it up with some fresh onions and spices, and even added a can of plain beans. Even with that, it wasn’t very good on its own. It was tolerable once I added some shredded cheese on top and paired it with some saltine crackers. My daughter tasted it and didn’t like it at all, so I didn’t make her eat it.
Let’s keep in mind that my daughter is age 11 as I write this. She’s not a master chef, but she knows how to work the stove, the microwave, the rice cooker, and the toaster oven. She’s watched me cook. She’s helped me fry catfish and chicken. She even prepared our Christmas dinner on her own for the most part, with me stepping in for guidance and taking things out of the oven. My point is, she knows how to cook; she just doesn’t.
So, when she asked me this morning if I was going to eat the leftover chili, I was confused because she didn’t like it. She said, “You said that it tasted better with crackers, so I was going to try it that way.”
I responded, “Why would you eat something you don’t like when we have options?”
I proceeded to get up and go into the kitchen with her and point out all of the food that we have. I don’t visit all of those food pantries for nothing, and I reminded her of that. As a matter of fact, sometimes we have so much food from all these different trips that I end up giving a lot of it away or even throwing some away because we won’t finish it in time before it spoils. If we have nothing else, we have an abundance of food.
This is a conversation that we have had multiple times before, but today the angle was a little different, because why would you eat something that you don’t like when you don’t have to? Because you feel like being lazy and not wanting to cook your own breakfast? The kitchen table is covered with fresh apples and oranges. There are dozens of cans of ready-to-eat soups, ravioli, and chili (from tastier brands) that just need to be heated up. There’s an unopened package of pumpkin spice bagels in the fridge (I keep bread in the fridge because that’s how my mother raised me, and the bread does last longer that way) that she loved in the past. We have a ridiculous amount of peanut butter in the pantry—at least 8-10 jars. There is sliced cheese (that I bought), unopened deli turkey, and bread in the refrigerator. There are all types of stuff in the freezer aside from the whole chicken, steaks, and a rack of lamb that we picked up from the pantry. I may not always have cash, but I always have just enough gas money to get me to and from these pantries that help me keep my pantry at home stocked.
She tried to walk away a few times, but I called her back because, for one, that’s not how you handle conversations that make you uncomfortable, and two, I demand the respect of having your listening ear because I’m your mother, and I do everything I can to make sure you want for nothing. Despite the fact that I have next to nothing in my bank account at this moment, you are able to be cheer captain on your school’s cheerleading team (not free), you have Wi-fi and electricity, and you have clothes on your back, yet you can’t even prepare breakfast for yourself? Ma’am.
We have talked many times about her seeming lack of survival skills, which I know she has. I know she listens to me when I talk about what to do when certain things happen and just how to navigate life in general. I told her, “You have way too many choices, and I work way too hard to keep food in this place for you to choose something that you know you don’t want to eat because you don’t want to put forth a little bit of effort to make it. You’re getting too big for this. You’re still my baby, but you’re getting to be a big girl. You can do more for yourself.”
Granted, some of this comes from being a tired single mother who has to do pretty much everything by herself, but it also comes from being somebody’s daughter—somebody who died with no material wealth and whose physical health declined in large part due to her mental and spiritual health being in shambles. Yes, my mom had heart disease and diabetes, but I always say it was poor relationships, years of overwork, pride, poverty, and stubbornness that actually claimed her life. And my life was so intertwined with my mother’s that I had to relearn how to live on my own when she died. I want my daughter to love me, but I don’t want that life for her. My own mortality slapped me in the face when my mother died.
Once my daughter and I were officially on our own again, I realized that even though there are people in our lives that we can call in case of emergency, it is just the two of us in our day-to-day lives. I could pass away in my sleep, and my daughter would be left to figure out who she needs to call for help. What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t teach her basic things about how to survive without me?
Anyway, while I gently fussed—and in the process made my daughter cry—about how we have an abundance and don’t need to settle for nasty food if we don’t have to, I thought to myself about what my ancestors have fussed at me about. I have told my daughter countless times to take the snacks and fruit with her to school to supplement her lunch, but she refuses. So the fresh apples and oranges end up rotting because no one eats them.
I used to pack her lunch daily, but I stopped when money got tight. Since I’ve been visiting the pantry, we have plenty, so home-packed lunches are a possibility again, but she’ll grab whatever prepackaged snacks we have. Lately, it hasn’t even been snacks. She’s been using her lunchbox to carry yarn to school so she can practice crocheting during her breaks. On the ride home, she’ll complain about being hungry, but I remind her that there was plenty of food she could’ve taken to school with her to help offset that.
Now, with a little assistance from Mommy, she’s eating hot pancakes that she mostly prepared herself, and she likes them. She has a slice of turkey and a fruit cup on the side. Way better than the leftover chili that she knows she doesn’t like. Hell, I only tolerate it. Homemade chili is always the way to go, but a good can of chili is great for those days when I don’t feel like cooking.
Not to turn this into a sermon because it isn’t, but I swear that’s the very lesson my ancestors try to drum into my head daily. I am surrounded by delicious abundance on a daily basis. I may need to put in a little extra effort sometimes, like maybe cleaning and roasting a whole chicken or figuring out measurements for the best cornbread I’ve ever made, but if I’m hungry, it’s because I choose to be.
It takes me back to just yesterday. We first attended the Mardi Gras parade that my daughter’s school marched in, and then attended her brother’s birthday party. Neither of us had a proper breakfast, and I really didn’t have any money to spare to buy food. I managed to scrape up a few coins and loyalty points to get a couple of two-piece snacks from Church’s Chicken, but I really didn’t want to do that. We were just so hungry by the time we left the party that neither of us had the patience to wait for me to cook anything when we got home.
I had forgotten to take some meat out of the freezer, so a proper home-cooked dinner wasn’t going to happen. While we were still at the party, I told myself I needed to do better about keeping “convenience” food available. By convenience, I mean leftovers or food I already prepared ahead of time, like beans, rice, tuna, etc. Just so I can always have cooked food available. So when I came home, I made some macaroni and cheese and added some pre-cooked chicken and broccoli to it. That’s what I had for breakfast this morning, and I still have leftovers. My daughter doesn’t like macaroni and cheese, so I don’t have to worry about sharing it. However, it is always on my mind to keep some sort of beans or lentils in the crockpot so I never have to wonder about what we’re going to eat because I don’t feel like it or don’t have time to cook.
The moral of the story is we don’t have to settle, and we can even eat in luxury with just a little forward-thinking and preparation.
Oh, the lessons we learn when we go off on our children.
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