REMEMBERING THE PAST… OR WAS THAT PASTA?

Looking back on how we raised our children as they grew into adulthood and how I was raised, there are some concerns. First of all: Mom did all the raising, yelling and wooden spooning, she was very adept at placing it on my head with various degrees of precision and success. One might suspect it was child abuse, but actually, it was love she was placing where it should be felt and remembered.

At the tender age of six I began my career as an errant child, always plotting and looking for ways to get away with things I found disagreeable like first grade and church, kissing aunts that squeezed my cheeks when I saw them, some biting my cheeks and of course uncles with smelly cigars that had the aromatics of a dead horse. 

Rules were strictly adhered to once I found out that I was paying a price for breaking them. Mom moved silently, like a shark under water, only to disrupt my karma and the sweet smell of temporary success as she suddenly appeared from the deep and down I went!

The church was not a playland under any circumstances and to violate that rule was double the pain. This was God’s house! You don’t mess with God. Jesus died on the wooden cross. I too was going to die from something wooden.

The instigation of hi-jinks against a sister, the retribution for acts of ratting me out and all other acts considered high crimes and misdemeanors were all met swiftly with reprisals, sometimes the wooden spoon hurt more than usual since it was just used for stirring the pasta in the hot water!

Every morning before school she would hand me my lunch in a lunch box with Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans on it. (I was in love with Dale and wished the bad guys would finally get Roy so I could make my move.) As the lunch goods were transferred to my possession it came with a stern warning: “If I find out that the teacher had to discipline you, when you come home you will get the rest!”

Mom had a special place in her heart for me. Actually, she had two special places, one being her heart as her child (however unbearable that might have been) and one in the corner where I spent a lot of my time.

Her teaching tool was her wooden spoon being Italian it was a utilitarian bonanza, ‘cook’ and ‘discipline’, how great was that. I swear she had a strike counter each time it was applied to my head. After so many strikes she would replace it. We weren’t rich, Mom had no special jewelry until later years, but she did have that one prized possession, her wooden spoon. As I would walk into the house and announce: “MOM, I’M HOME!” she would wave it as an acknowledgment of my greeting and subtle meaning: ‘don’t destroy my mood. I, on the other hand, knew that I had to stay outside of her arm range. Often the times we would race around the dining room table, me running and waiting for the first whack and her with her ever menacing spoon looming mere inches close to my cranial cavity, empty as it was. If I felt particularly robust that day and caught Mom off her game, I would take pity and we would stop, sit on the chairs and when she was catching her breath I would ask, ”You ready again, Mom?” Somehow I like to think I was being considerate. She reached the age or retirement once I married, where she gave me the spoon and I painted it gold and she named it: “GENTLE PERSUASION”