My parents were married on Veterans’ Day.  This past November marked 36 years together. When I was growing up, they celebrated each anniversary by taking the family to the American Legion for dinner.  (My father is a Vietnam Vet.)  Those dinners consisted of beef stew and ice cream.  Can you guess which, as a child, I hated?  For several years, I wouldn’t even taste the stew, opting to hold out for the block of frozen dairy goodness wrapped in smooth paperboard.  I couldn’t get a brick of ice cream just anywhere; it was a treat and a novelty.

I think I’ve become more open-minded about food since those days of refusing the stew (and complaining loudly about it, I’m sure), but I recently faced a test.  The wonderful women of my mothers’ group organized to bring meals to my family to help us out after the birth of my babies.  We benefited from a homemade meal every other day for about two and half weeks.  And most of these meals provided abundant leftovers so I did very little cooking that month.

I’m sure you can imagine just how much I appreciated this service.  Easier shopping and one less thing to think about most days was a true blessing.  But I have to admit a tiny bit of apprehension in the beginning about whether or not we’d like the food.  I don’t think my kids are any pickier than the average 3- and 5-year-olds, but they are still 3 and 5 years old and this was weeks of unfamiliar meals.  And there was a slight pang for my own taste buds when I saw that the first dinner on our list was that second most hated from my childhood: beef stew.

It turned out that I didn’t have anything to worry about.  The stew was delicious (Thanks, Theresa!) as were all the meals (Thanks to everyone else!), and even my kids found plenty to appreciate, even if sometimes it was only the fact that the dinner included dessert.  The experience also showed that perhaps our regular menu is getting a little too familiar.  With one of the meals provided was a spinach salad that I was sure would flop.  We tend to stick with boring iceberg because a certain member of the family prefers not to find “weeds” in his salad.  But the kids got a kick out of eating leaves.  (I didn’t call it spinach.)  In fact, they enjoyed it so much I felt the need to explain the difference between those leaves and the ones in our backyard. My son also really liked the Ham and Potato Soup someone brought because it had “baked potatoes” in it.  When your child names a food by the way it’s prepared, there might be a rut.

While I am personally grateful to each and every woman who brought us food, they remained fairly anonymous to the rest of my family.  My son knew none of their names.  He knew only that some of the moms I knew where helping us out.  So he referred to all of them as “the mom.”  As in, is the mom bringing us dinner today?  Or what did the mom make for us?  It conjured this great image in my mind of a benevolent force in society.  Whereas The Man might bring you down, The Mom could prop you up again.  I’d like to think The Mom is there for all of us from time to time in some form or another.  Whether it’s good friends, some charitable organization or simply a random act of kindness, and I know from experience that she makes a mean Spaghetti Casserole.  

Mandy Hamm, the mom of four including newborn twins, appears every other weekend on TriangleMom2Mom.