Baked Goods and Life Lessons With My Mom

I’ve always looked at the concept of life as a system of randomness–some people have bad luck and are pushed down by a blanket of despair while others have good luck and are held up by a cloud of glowing happiness, all for no reason and with no pattern. I held onto this for years, until my curiosity led me to a different path. In life, there’s only one thing that can create life: women. Thus, I went to my mom for a few life lessons, her commentary and advice changed my perspective to a less depressing one. Usually, the relationship between parents and children isn’t filled with a whole lot of understanding. By this I mean that most kids don’t know about the lives of their parents and why they are the way that they are, their constant lectures and life advice becoming more of an annoyance instead of beneficial towards understanding life and its volatile state. The only thing I knew about my mom’s childhood was that she grew up dirt poor, moved every year to a different state, and that she was alone in trying to provide herself with growth and a good perspective on life and its experiences.

To learn more about her past, I suggested that we cook together, something she had to teach herself once she was thrown out after graduating and quickly learned to love. We decided on a French apple tart, ultimately spending a total of three hours together talking about her life and what she’s learned from her past.

As we were making the shell of the tart, which oddly resembles a pie crust almost ingredient for ingredient, I started my interrogating. “Mom, when you were younger, what was your dream job?”.

“I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a nurse once I turned seven. Before that, I wanted to be a chef so that I could make something amazing every day and work with something new and delicious whenever I wanted to instead of having to be familiar with what I was used to”.

“What were you used to?”

 “Well, we never had any food. Normally, the only things I’d find are some bread, ketchup, and sometimes some chips and I’d be forced to make that into a meal. I never had any homecooked meals, not even for Thanksgiving or Christmas”. As she was speaking, the bags under her eyes seemed to get darker and more noticeable by the second. Her body language characterized a nearly middle-aged woman, exhausted and beaten down by life, with its entirety revolving around work and kids. Her hands worked slowly but precisely, like a beat-up old machine that was ready for retirement. We moved from the shell to the filling, making some small talk throughout the way. As we talked and I observed her in her “natural habitat”, her tone suggested that she was irritated, most likely because she was already tired before I had to suck out her remaining energy with a task and questions for school, but also because her life has not gone the way she had planned. Even though my mother loves cooking and spending time with her daughter is something she always cherishes, the deeper I try and pry into her life and backstory the more rigid she seems to get.

I already understand the reasoning behind this, she’s never had an easy life and the memories are deeply unpleasant. Her step-father was abusive, she grew up dirt poor and had to scavenge to survive. Her daily meals consisted of bread and ketchup, possibly with chip crumbs if she could find any. I was intrigued by her past, I wanted to understand exactly why my mom is the way that she is and why she turned out so different from the rest of her family, so I asked her about what her goals in life were and how they panned out. “Before I was kicked out, I mainly dreamed of the day I would be able to leave and make something of myself. The day I was kicked out, that all had to be put on the back burner for a while until I could provide for myself and make my way up. I worked hard and eventually, I went to college and graduated, and then once I had you guys, my focus was providing you with a childhood I didn’t have. I’d say that turned out pretty well”.

“So do you feel that you’ve made something of yourself?”

“I don’t really know. I think instead of making something of myself, I’ve tried to give that dream to you and your brother”.

“So are you saying that you’ve tried for us to be able to make something of ourselves?”

“Yes”.

In a quick attempt to obtain more information into how her life is now as compared to how she might have wanted it to be planned out, I asked my mom what her normal day looks like. “My day is pretty average. I go to work for about eight hours, I come home and work another eight hours, and then I go to bed. On my days off, I slurp up all the time I can get to myself, which usually isn’t a lot. Kids are very demanding, and life is very demanding. If you want a roof over your head, dinner on the table every night, and clothes on everyone’s backs then you have to work miserably every day. Good things don’t happen to lazy people, remember that”. My mom was becoming more comfortable, her motions softening and her eyes and body loosened up, so I took the opportunity to ask her if her life turned out the way she wanted it to and what she was most excited about when she was younger. “I always fantasized about how I’d live, like what my house would look like and if I’d have a husband and kids and a job that I was happy in. Now, I have a beautiful home with a giant kitchen that I’m proud to call home, and I found your step-father after divorcing your ……… father”.

 “Are you happy with the outcome of your life regarding what you have now vs. what you didn’t have back then?”

“I’m pretty content with how things have gone, I’ve provided more for myself and my family than what my parents did, so I’m pretty proud that I’ve been a better person than them and that I proved to them that I’m strong and don’t depend on their help to make a life for myself and my family”…“I dreamed about everything I wanted out of life, so I guess I sort of planned it out. I dreamed for our house, I dreamed for your [step] father, and I dreamed to provide any kids I’d have with a better life than what I ever got, so yeah it’s all pretty close. I do wish we had a pool though”. My mom has never connected with me like this before, and suddenly her behavior all makes sense. I’ve always questioned why she’s so defensive, why she’s so opinionated, and why she protects herself whether she knows she’s right or wrong down to the point where she’d die on top of her hill and now, I understand. She had to create her strong views, she had to be opinionated, and she had to be defensive constantly in order to survive in her world. Then, as true to her nature, she protected her kids from that world and made sure they never understood her pain. 

To wrap up my interview and our baking, as we sat down and waited for the oven to go off, I asked my mom what advice she’d give to me, a younger generation, that she learned through her experiences and what she believes to be the most important. “Always keep pushing, always keep trying, never give up, and never depend on anyone other than yourself, and even though it may seem impossible, it may look like the fog won’t clear, one day it always does as long as you keep trying. You can’t win if you don’t try, so don’t ever be lazy and just give up because you won’t learn anything from that, you’ll only abandon something that you could learn and grow from and that isn’t living a life, that’s avoiding life”…“With how things have panned out in my life, I kind of questioned why the things I was experiencing were happening to me. It almost felt like it was all a giant joke or just plain bad luck, so I’ve always kind of just considered this strength as earned. I believe that people go through life earning the things they’ve tried for or earning another kind of strength that will help them with something else that pops up in their lives. It’s better to look at life in that way instead of comparing it to complete randomness with some people being extremely happy and others in complete despair for no reason at all. It makes it less depressing”. Thus, because of my mom and the horrid things she’s experienced, I now think of life as opportunities instead of complete randomness.

Featured Image: OHeath23. “Baked Goods and Life Lessons with My Mom”. 20 Sept. 2023