Dinner with friends.

I should rename this blog "lamentations about my dead mother" to more accurately reflect the things I write about here. I would, but "Brambles" seems much more vague. Keeping my options open.

It's another post about mom. Or maybe it's just a post about me. Let's find out together, shall we?

Tonight I hosted a potluck dinner for a small, well loved group of folks. The official theme was "home cooking" - interpretation left to each individual. When I hear that phrase, my mind goes to the food I ate as a child; the smells, textures, flavors of a daily life where I still rode a bicycle almost every day in summer and didn't mind the sticky residue from watermelon. I go back to being a kid and the magic of dinnertime. In my head, it is magical. I'm sure I've painted over it and gifted a romance to the picture that doesn't really exist. I understand the truth of this but it has become my reality - I don't remember anything else.

Part of the magic is that many of the foods I associate with my childhood are not foods I eat now with any regularity - or at all. A common meal would be pan fried breaded pork chops with mashed potatoes, canned vegetable, and (for my mother) a few fresh green onions on the side. We didn't eat much fruit but we ate a lot of canned veggies and fried food. Mom wasn't trying to set bad examples or give our adult selves something to be horrified about - this was the food she ate as a child, that she had learned to prepare, that she knew and was comfortable with. This was Home Cooking at it's slightly southern best. As an adult, I realize the nutritional pitfalls of my childhood. As a mom, I work really hard to avoid serving those pitfalls up to my kids. We eat fresh or frozen veggies, a lot of fresh fruit in all varieties, not so much fried food. I'm not trying to pull a superiority thing - the bare fact is that I work hard to compose meals for my family that are substantially better nutritionally than the meals I ate as a child.

But (in my head, or more importantly, to my palette) meatloaf should still have mashed potatoes, spaghetti begs for hash browns, and eggs are best fried over easy in bacon grease. I digress.

"Home cooking" was tonight's theme, and it got me thinking about the flavors of my childhood. I wasn't thrilled to bring those out tonight (see paragraph above about change). So I started thinking about my version of home cooking. What will my children remember eating years from now? What flavors, textures, combinations will come back to them when they're busying about their own kitchens? Will the food I give them now, in these years, be something they remember with fondness or horror? Will they romanticize their childhood home cooked meals, or remember them accurately? Does it matter?

I believe it does matter. Food is a key component to our existence. When I think of cornbread, I think of Mom's cast iron skillet, sizzling with butter. When I think of Christmas, I can see Mom bustling around the kitchen, wearing bells at her ears, singing carols and baking cookies. Food is the thread that holds us together in deep, unknown ways - ways that surprise us, comfort us, carry us through. Ask anyone, and everyone can tell you a food story. It might be happy or sad, exciting, tragic, or dull. But it's their story, rooted in sustenance.

To wrap up a bit of the story, I ended up fixing spaghetti for tonight's home cooking contribution. It's the first thing I started cooking from scratch. Many years, I even spend two days sweating in the kitchen to churn out quart after quart of home made marinara sauce for the pantry. It's become my comfortable, known, flavorful home cooked meal. I skipped the hash browns that accompanied my childhood spaghetti - like always -but if I'd had potatoes I might have made them just tonight, as an homage to being a kid.

I guess this really isn't so much about Mom as it is about me. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised. I was expecting something more focused on the past, not this sort of wandering through to the present.

If I'm going down, I might as well go down in a blaze. No, glory doesn't have a thing to do with it.

Almost six months ago I was seized by a crazy moment of inspiration and got down the beginnings of a story, written specifically for (and sort of about) my kids. I was all afire about the thing, really excited about how the first run sounded. It needed work but I felt like the bones of the tale was there and workable. Unfortunately, I ran out of work time on it. Like so many things, it fell victim to a lack of time, focus, and energy.

And now I can't find the stupid thing.

I'm so frustrated. I'm resisting the urge to fill the recycle bin with things that seem useless and needless right now - like the stack of notebooks full of my other writing. I cannot believe how many random bits of poetry are hidden here, there, everywhere. And I'm stunned at how awful it all is.

Yeah, sure. I used to write poetry. But none of it was very good, none of it is something that I'm proud of, and none of it is really something anyone wants to read. That's how it all feels right now. I cannot imagine what I used to think I was doing or why. Or why I thought anyone would want to read it.

All of this happening on a day when I feel insane. Almost physically shaking from the effort to be reasonable, calm, focused. In an earlier age, I would have gotten stinking drunk. In a more recent age, I would have gone to the store and bought cake and ice cream, with fresh cookies to tide me over on the drive home. Now, I just don't know what to do.

But burning all the old poetry is a really appealing plan of action.

This mom thing keeps me thoughtful.

In the last two weeks, my three year old has made shocking strides. His vocabulary has exploded. His maturity has lept ahead. He's potty trained. He's tall. He's sensitive and thoughtful. He's also crazy, happy, and now verbalizes how he's feeling.

I have to keep reminding myself that the poor kid is still just three years old. I see him, and he feels older to me. Tonight, he talked about the reflection of the night light. That's the kind of thing he's noticing and commenting on.

It's not all good, though. My mind is fooling me and suddenly my expectations are a bit skewed. I reasonably explain that it's past bedtime and we can't read a book. In a classic three year old way, he covered his eyes and cried in disappointment. I admit, I somewhat impatiently put him into bed with ice cream smeared on his chin and tears in his eyes. I'd love to wake him, wipe his face, whisper a nighttime lullaby, and hug his warm sleepy three year old self. I'm going to endeavor to remember the sweet three year old tomorrow.

And read him a very good book.