Story of my life...

It seems as if I'm always doing this--standing in the kitchen, looking through a cookbook, trying to figure out what's for dinner.

My mom tells a similar story about the stress of the infamous question, "What's for dinner?" In some ways her telling of it is a boast that she not only worked 8-4, five days a week, but that she also cooked a full, homemade meal, worthy of sitting down at the dining room table, following every one of those long days at the office.

I think it was 1976 when she "went back to work"--the year that both my brother and I were in school all day, the family was low on cash, and my dad had a flexible enough schedule as a professor at a university that she could work full time even though we only had one car.

She rode with a friend who lived nearby. Each day, she was picked up at 7:30 am and dropped off at 4:30 pm. And according to my mom, each day, just as her high-heeled foot would extend from the open car door and touch the curb, my brother, sitting patiently on the cement front steps, would say, "Mom, what's for dinner?" She claims he looked pitiful and forlorn as if he hadn't eaten all day. He claims he hated broccoli and kidney beans and was merely ensuring he'd have a stress-free meal.

Which ever is true is no longer the point of the story. For me, as a working mom with school-aged kids, the story is more about how one woman "did it all". How she, exhausted after a full day of work outside the home, kicked off her heels, and went to work again in her own kitchen. It's about how one woman, despite the shifting cultural paradigms from the role of the stay-at-home/housewife to that of the working mom with the latchkey kids, successfully merged the two sets of values-- making it look easy and making it look as if every other mom was doing this, too.

There are times when I'm tired or when I just don't feel like cooking. There are times when I contemplate calling out for pizza, but because of my mom and all those hot meals, served promptly at 5:45pm, I think better of it and keep flipping the pages of my cookbook until I find the perfect thing for tonight.