WHEN FATHERS BECOME MOTHERS

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Every other Sunday I metamorphose into a mother. Probably a lot of you have been calling me a mother anyway for years, but Sundays in particular, when my daughter comes home from her group home for dinner, I become her Mom. Oh, TLW (The Little Woman) is still her mother and takes preference over me, but Ellen my daughter looks for me to feed her.

There are a few foods she loves and recognizes, and one in particular that excites her. It raises her to shouting with glee and clapping her hands and patting me on the back, she is so happy I am making it. She doesn’t speak, which is a rarity for a woman of 40 years, but she doesn’t.

Her favorite dish in the whole world is tortellini. Made with a cream sauce and wine, she absolutely goes crazy over it. She can tell when I am making it and starts to congratulate me by: hugging me, patting my head and clapping her hands while laughing. Food is the only real pleasure in life she has. She usually finishes hers in a hurry: and eyes my plate, and I wind up giving her the rest of my dinner, which she takes gladly. But this is what a mother would do: at least TLW always did, and now, so do I.

Ellen has a very large appetite, yet is very skinny, so naturally I hate the kid. I have a very small appetite now, and let’s put it this way: not skinny. (Let’s be kind out there) She can eat easy, two plates of pasta and salad, and look for more.

We also give her soda because she never gets it at her home, but does love it. We feel she is home now, so we will give her whatever she wants. She can drink about a ¾ liter bottle in one Sunday.

One would think after the menu we presented my daughter with, she would want to linger a while, savor the tastes that linger, but that would be false. She is like the perfect relative who comes for dinner, she eats and runs.