Things My Mom Taught Me 3

Advice on getting ready, convenience, and meals on a budget

Me in middle school, squarely in the midst of learning so many important lessons.

For someone who never wanted kids, my mother sure had some life lessons that are universally helpful for a child. I know she didn’t want me. Maybe there were times she did, but there were so many times that she reminded me that she never wanted kids. So it was pretty clear in my kid brain that I wasn’t a longed-for child, from my mom at least. Between our periods of closeness (a best friendship that featured the unequal power dynamic between mother and daughter), hurtful fights, and confusing periods of silence when she would not speak to me, I knew that this was not how other mother-daughter relationships were.

I sought out other mentors and mother-figures in hard times of our relationship, but none of them had the kind of life experience and advice like my mom. Most of the women had always lived in a small town or had ventured out to a suburb for college and then come back. They tried to give me advice on how to approach my mom but it was often focused on me apologizing for something I hadn’t done or begging her to talk to me again even though I was a child. In those tough periods, I just wished I had someone like my mom to call so they could tell me what to do with my mom who might say something other than the advice I was getting.

I always (still do) miss my mom’s calm advice in the middle of a proverbial or very real storm. I have been in many precarious situations, and when we were in a good period of our relationship, I would call and ask her what to do. She was often right. She was the parent I called when I was in too deep, when I felt like I couldn’t call anyone else, and I really miss that. I learned so much from her, and I’m grateful for the many life lessons she taught me.

Thank you for reading these essays. It has been so helpful to me to be able to process some things that have been trapped inside my brain.

The time it takes to be “presentable”

My mother was a “raging feminist” in her 20s. Second wave feminism was in full swing and it focused on sex and gender equality. She got ornery when a man held a door open for her, insisting that she could open a door herself. She had her own bank account that she maintained even after marrying my dad in the late 1980s. She resented the second shift that she and so many other women experienced, something my friends still experience.

This, of course, informed her parenting. My mother wore makeup very rarely and didn’t shave her legs very often. She showered and let her hair air dry as she was reading, crafting, or working on her latest passion project. Throughout my childhood she shared wisdom learned in her women’s studies courses and life lessons from being a woman coming into her own in the Twin Cities.

Over and over again throughout my childhood, adolescence, and teenage years, she spoke about the collective hours that women wasted on getting ready. She would go on and on about how if one woman takes 30 minutes a day to put on makeup and do her hair, a time investment so much greater than men. Then she would get even more agitated thinking about all of the collective women combined who spend so much time doing their hair and makeup for MEN. A tragedy! I completely understand her perspective to be honest. With some math of 30 minutes each day, that’s:

• 3.5 hours each week, or

• 15 hours a month, or

• 182.5 hours a year / 7.6 days a year, or

• 1,825 hours a decade / 76 days a decade

My mom would say, imagine wasting 7 whole days a year on getting ready just to be presentable in the way people expect, or worse, in the way a man expects! Which, YES! Imagine that! She would talk about all the time women spent in the bathroom or at their vanities instead of being creative or thinking or working on a project for their community. My mom rejected getting ready every day, and she accomplished so much! She created the community theater in our town, started the talent show that was added to our town’s summer festival, and was at the helm of the grassroots campaign against a tar pit and gravel pit in our rural township. Maybe she would have accomplished all of that if she did her makeup every day, but maybe not. I admire that about her.

Now, if you like getting ready and spending time shaving your legs for yourself, then go for it! You might not consider those hours and days wasted like my mom did, and that is the important thing about modern day feminism. BUT I also think it’s important to consider the purpose of why you’re doing something, and whether it is worth the time investment. I never consider a minute in the kitchen wasted, no matter the failures or time consuming recipe that gets in the way of other things, but I know others would. Next time you’re getting all dolled up, make sure the time investment is worth it for you.

In survival mode, do the convenient thing

I have written about this before, especially relating to cooking. Much of my young adulthood feels like I was on the edge. I was living paycheck to paycheck, loading thousands of dollars on credit cards, just trying to survive living in New York City. I was teaching, going to grad school, dating, dancing, hanging with friends, eating out to experience all the new foods I didn’t have access to before, and going on trips.

It was stressful financially and every moment of every day seemed to be spoken for, leaving only a few hours a night to sleep (a crime for someone who needs sleep as much as I do). I would wake up in the early morning (think 4 a.m.), write my lesson plans for THAT day of teaching because I was so underwater, read my grad school texts on the train to school, teach all day, read grad school assignments again, grab dinner somewhere while writing discussion posts on Moodle or making progress on a research paper, go to class, get home and go to sleep by 11, only to wake up and do it again the next day. Some days when I didn’t have grad school I would go to a friend’s apartment and work on grad school assignment, or meet up with friends for dinner or drinks, or go on a date, or go to a weeknight theater show someone I knew got tickets for that day. On weekends I would let loose, staying out late dancing or completely collapse and stay in bed all day.

I was barely surviving in any sense. I rarely cooked, and ordered takeout a lot because time was of the essence. When I think about that time, I don’t think it was very distant to how my mom felt when I was young. She was a person ripped from her career because she had a baby and fled to a small town after a school shooting in St. Paul, where she and my dad first lived with me. She was commuting to the city to work, dropping me off at daycare, rushing home to get me, make dinner, getting me to bed, and doing it all over again. It was the opposite of what she wanted out of her life, although I don’t know that for sure. I think she was in survival mode too.

The 1990s, as the kids say, the nineteen hundreds, were the perfect time for convenience foods to reign supreme, and boy did my mom #leanin. She opted for prepackaged foods and boxed mixes to sustain us for both budgetary reasons and because there was no way she was going to spend time in the kitchen making rice from scratch. (see section above) This woman didn’t want to waste time getting all dolled up, do you think she wanted to waste her one wild and precious life in a kitchen? No way. She wanted to be in and out ASAP. I completely get it honestly!

In times when I have been in a busy season, I too opt for convenience. I buy granola and bread instead of making it. I whip up quick dinners with my husband so I can get to work on small business things or run to the couch to claim a tiny bit of me-time crocheting. I tell myself over and over: THIS IS OKAY! Convenience is okay to use when you need that accommodation. Thank you mom, for modeling that for me all those years ago.

Meals to satisfy on a budget

As a person who found herself in the middle of meal plans and managing a kitchen, with a household budget on a single income, my mom was the queen of getting us nourished for as low cost as possible. She used canned and frozen veggies, Minute rice, instant mashed potatoes, and portioned ground meat stored in the freezer.

My dad did the grocery shopping, usually with me in tow, and my mom unpacked and stored everything in air tight containers (shoutout Tupperware!) or the freezer to preserve their freshness or their longevity. She leaned on the freeze dried veggies included in Rice-A-Roni boxes to make a complete meal, microwaved frozen corn, green beans, and peas for sides, and ensured that we always had whole wheat bread with butter on the side of most meals. She made big batches of meatballs for spaghetti, goulash, and pasta with canned tuna and peas, all of which would give plenty of leftovers for many nights to come. My parents really made it work the best they could with feeding us, and my mom’s commitment to frugality left a little wiggle room financially for hobbies (mainly books and yarn).

With cost of living continually rising and rising, I feel at peace knowing I can get my husband and myself fed and nourished for a small amount of money. That is thanks to my mom.

*Note: If this is something you’d want me to write more about, let me know! I feel like there’s so many resources online about this already but if the people want it, I will write about it.

If you missed them, read the other posts in the series here:

I hope that you’ve taken some tidbits from my mom that have made your life a little better over the last few months.

Things I Like

• My Pins from the last two weeks are really emblematic of where my thoughts wander these days: Springy salmon over potato wedges, the perfect upper Midwest transition meal. A butter yellow hotdog cake. A circus butter dish. Tattoo dreams. Bikini vibes for summer. Creative photos for a future dinner party. Beans. A cute kid hat - should I start knitting? A bold red orange scarf. A dress. A bathroom. Imagining how my hair will look when it’s long and grey. Beetroot cured salmon.

• I continue to love wraps lately: buffalo chicken wrap, chicken caesar salad wrap, cheese salami and arugula wrap. I predict wraps will continue to grow in popularity in the next couple of years, and I am on board. When I need some inspo, I check my favorite sandwich shops for flavor and ingredient combinations.

• Sitting on the floor, eyes closed, basking in the sun, like a cat. Try it sometime!

May your week be gentle and may you eat well. 🌲🥣