blog-pic-2.jpg

“I bet Einstein turned himself all sorts of colors before he invented the light bulb.”
Homer Simpson

Lipstick, high heels, vanilla pudding…. Most mothers would agree we instinctively know there is a high price for perfection. What I never dreamt however, was that during my daughter’s formidable years she was the equivalent of a micro-chipped chalkboard. Everyday storing bits of anything I said - even dumb things… Allow me to share a snippet from our early cooking days….. It is 1990. My precious kindergartner is standing on a chair beside me. We are making homemade plum jelly. She has the task of stirring.”How many more minutes Mommmmy?”

I did not know. I had never made jelly before. But I wanted it to be perfect. The purple goo was almost thick so I said, “stir-stir-stir……”

“But Mommmmy! My hand is falling off!”

“Doesn’t matter Rissa, just stir-stir-stir…..”

Bless her heart she stirred while I glopped jelly into jars, but messy-me spilled most of it onto the counter. We hurried to salvage this labor of plums with our hands. Our fingers were purple for a week. Before you knew it, Marissa was grown and moving into a college apartment that lacked storage space. So she and I tackled another Three Stooges project —- hanging shellllves. I leaned like London-Bridges-Falling-Down into a closet over-stuffed with shirts and hangers jabbing my eyeballs. (You guessed it… my task was holding a super heavy shelf to the wall; level.) “How many more minutes Rissa?”

“I don’t know. Just hold the shelf until I come back. I need to find a drill.”

“But Rissss! My hand is falling off!”

“Doesn’t matter. Just hold it until I get back.”