What came to mind for me was how my mom would tell me about eating buttermilk soup when she was a little girl. I heard about buttermilk soup every time I complained about not liking what was being served at the dinner table, and my mom would describe the disgusting taste and the raisins that had been added to the mixture -- floating on the top! My mom's parents had immigrated from Germany before WWII, and during the years before and during the war they raised seven children on a small farm in rural Nebraska. Apparently, buttermilk was easy to make and very inexpensive. Thankfully, my mother never tortured us with her rendition of buttermilk soup. But I did get to experience buttermilk soup!! As a junior in college I studied in Germany, and I was the first in my generation to return to the village where my grandparents had lived before venturing to America. My mother's relatives were delighted to welcome me and they simply could not do enough to make me feel welcome. One evening when I was talking to my mom's cousin about some of the customs and traditions we had adopted from our ancestral home, I mentioned that my mother and her siblings had eaten buttermilk soup. Unfortunately, I didn't mention that they absolutely hated it. The next morning, my mom's cousin was up early preparing a large pot of buttermilk soup -- complete with raisins! When I tasted my first sip of buttermilk soup for lunch that day, I understood why my mom hated it!! It was truly disgusting. But I couldn't tell my mom's cousin. To make it worse, she had prepared an enormous pot so that we could enjoy it for lunch the next day and the day after that. Finally, on the third day I asked for an extra bowl so that I would never have to taste it again. Thankfully, my mom's cousin never guessed how much I struggled to choke down that last bowl of buttermilk soup!
oh my gosh what a journey. i've never had such an experience. thanks for relaying it. very vivid. and i'll run in the opposite direction if offered buttermilk soup!
My spouse, Erik, was the third child. He has two older brothers. His mother wanted a girl. His grandmother, who claimed to have accurately predicted all the sexes of her grandchildren, said he was going to be a girl. His parents were missionaries, dependent on donations from their sponsoring denomination in the states. With all the confidence of classic confirmation bias, his parents requested only girls clothing. Erik was dressed in girls clothing for the first four years of his life. This, combined with no small amount of misandry coming from his mother left him very sensitive about any potential feminizing of our boys. Martin, our second child, was/is a thespian who did a lot of dancing in musicals. We had to purchase specialized dance attire on several occasions. At one store I told the clerk, in front of Martin, that if I had a daughter I would have bought her dozens of tutus. Martin, who transitioned to Amelia seven years ago, has told me repeatedly that this was the most painful, upsetting experience of her life because she desperately wanted those dozens of tutus.
At one point a friend of mine told me how at her daughter's preschool in Portland, they had tutu Tuesday where pretty much every kid in the class wore a tutu - gender and sex be damned. Although Amelia's desire for tutus was gender specific, truth is almost all kids love wearing tutus, a fact I regret not having figured out when my kids were young, part of that being my misguided commitment to not feminizing my kids.
Because my mom did, I cooked liver and onions once a week for awhile. Maybe because it was inexpensive but I realized no one liked it and who knew whether or not it was good for you but it certainly didn’t make for a pleasant dinner time experience😜
PS, like your Mom I make my bed every morning without fail 😘
Great to hear from you, Jody I'm not surprised you're a bed maker, and thank you for reminding me that my mother made liver and onions very infrequently thank goodness!
For my English mother (in whose front yard a doodlebug landed; they lived not far from Chequers), bananas were what she coveted. She also marveled at the fact that her grandmother was able to procure oranges for them when they were sent with her to Wales at the height of the war.
Those that grew up with World War II rationing experienced a degree of want and gratitude that I as a middle class and then upper middle class kid could not relate to. And I think there's a loss in that.
While I grew up with few wants, I realize we did not have as much as others in my circle. My mother enjoyed alcohol too much and set her expectations very high for me, her eldest. We were similar in temperment so we were oil and water in the teen years, therefore having my dad step in to remind me of her title of "mom" and that was to be respected. Dad was my go-to but, really, my maternal grandmother was the one who had all of my angst on her shoulders and kept most of it to herself (while also reminding me to "be a good girl" in high school and college).
Whatever it was I was taught and handed I treat as them doing the best they could with what they had, materially and emotionally, at that particular moment. Parenting is a journey and it coincides with their personal and professional journeys and I know they loved me as they could at that moment. I have brought forward some of their values for our children and left, most of the time, the flashes of anger foisted upon me (just check my diaries from junior and high school years for the proof of what I was not going to carry forward) by my mother.
This gives me the grace to forgive what I hated as a child and the wish for my children to give me the grace for what they felt was "wrong" in our raising them.
What came to mind for me was how my mom would tell me about eating buttermilk soup when she was a little girl. I heard about buttermilk soup every time I complained about not liking what was being served at the dinner table, and my mom would describe the disgusting taste and the raisins that had been added to the mixture -- floating on the top! My mom's parents had immigrated from Germany before WWII, and during the years before and during the war they raised seven children on a small farm in rural Nebraska. Apparently, buttermilk was easy to make and very inexpensive. Thankfully, my mother never tortured us with her rendition of buttermilk soup. But I did get to experience buttermilk soup!! As a junior in college I studied in Germany, and I was the first in my generation to return to the village where my grandparents had lived before venturing to America. My mother's relatives were delighted to welcome me and they simply could not do enough to make me feel welcome. One evening when I was talking to my mom's cousin about some of the customs and traditions we had adopted from our ancestral home, I mentioned that my mother and her siblings had eaten buttermilk soup. Unfortunately, I didn't mention that they absolutely hated it. The next morning, my mom's cousin was up early preparing a large pot of buttermilk soup -- complete with raisins! When I tasted my first sip of buttermilk soup for lunch that day, I understood why my mom hated it!! It was truly disgusting. But I couldn't tell my mom's cousin. To make it worse, she had prepared an enormous pot so that we could enjoy it for lunch the next day and the day after that. Finally, on the third day I asked for an extra bowl so that I would never have to taste it again. Thankfully, my mom's cousin never guessed how much I struggled to choke down that last bowl of buttermilk soup!
oh my gosh what a journey. i've never had such an experience. thanks for relaying it. very vivid. and i'll run in the opposite direction if offered buttermilk soup!
Yes, do run in the opposite direction!
My spouse, Erik, was the third child. He has two older brothers. His mother wanted a girl. His grandmother, who claimed to have accurately predicted all the sexes of her grandchildren, said he was going to be a girl. His parents were missionaries, dependent on donations from their sponsoring denomination in the states. With all the confidence of classic confirmation bias, his parents requested only girls clothing. Erik was dressed in girls clothing for the first four years of his life. This, combined with no small amount of misandry coming from his mother left him very sensitive about any potential feminizing of our boys. Martin, our second child, was/is a thespian who did a lot of dancing in musicals. We had to purchase specialized dance attire on several occasions. At one store I told the clerk, in front of Martin, that if I had a daughter I would have bought her dozens of tutus. Martin, who transitioned to Amelia seven years ago, has told me repeatedly that this was the most painful, upsetting experience of her life because she desperately wanted those dozens of tutus.
At one point a friend of mine told me how at her daughter's preschool in Portland, they had tutu Tuesday where pretty much every kid in the class wore a tutu - gender and sex be damned. Although Amelia's desire for tutus was gender specific, truth is almost all kids love wearing tutus, a fact I regret not having figured out when my kids were young, part of that being my misguided commitment to not feminizing my kids.
what a profound story to share, thank you
Because my mom did, I cooked liver and onions once a week for awhile. Maybe because it was inexpensive but I realized no one liked it and who knew whether or not it was good for you but it certainly didn’t make for a pleasant dinner time experience😜
PS, like your Mom I make my bed every morning without fail 😘
Great to hear from you, Jody I'm not surprised you're a bed maker, and thank you for reminding me that my mother made liver and onions very infrequently thank goodness!
For my English mother (in whose front yard a doodlebug landed; they lived not far from Chequers), bananas were what she coveted. She also marveled at the fact that her grandmother was able to procure oranges for them when they were sent with her to Wales at the height of the war.
Those that grew up with World War II rationing experienced a degree of want and gratitude that I as a middle class and then upper middle class kid could not relate to. And I think there's a loss in that.
While I grew up with few wants, I realize we did not have as much as others in my circle. My mother enjoyed alcohol too much and set her expectations very high for me, her eldest. We were similar in temperment so we were oil and water in the teen years, therefore having my dad step in to remind me of her title of "mom" and that was to be respected. Dad was my go-to but, really, my maternal grandmother was the one who had all of my angst on her shoulders and kept most of it to herself (while also reminding me to "be a good girl" in high school and college).
Whatever it was I was taught and handed I treat as them doing the best they could with what they had, materially and emotionally, at that particular moment. Parenting is a journey and it coincides with their personal and professional journeys and I know they loved me as they could at that moment. I have brought forward some of their values for our children and left, most of the time, the flashes of anger foisted upon me (just check my diaries from junior and high school years for the proof of what I was not going to carry forward) by my mother.
This gives me the grace to forgive what I hated as a child and the wish for my children to give me the grace for what they felt was "wrong" in our raising them.