My relationship with food.

My mother was never a good cook. It's not that she couldn't do it, it's just that she never had the desire that some women do.
"Being a mother is a thankless job." she often told me.
"You slave over a hot stove for hours and then your kids complain! I don't like that."
She really didn't.
The phrase: "Slave over a hot stove" to this day still reminds me of what hell will probably be like. My mother used this phrase often, although I never actually saw her "slave over a hot stove." She did however, "struggle over a wine cork" on a daily basis. I do admire the way she refuses to feel guilty about her lack of culinary skills though. When I lament to her about my childhood school lunches and how they scarred me for life, she simply says
"Well you're alive aren't cha?"
During third grade lunches though, I would have rather been dead.
Sitting in the middle of a long, forest green table, I would scan the tabletop. Capri-suns glittered in their shiny package, Dunkaroos, Little Debbies, Fritos, my god....a Squeeze-it! I hated all the other girls with their cool 90210 lunch boxes and their handwritten notes. They'd look at me smugly crunching Cheetos and licking florescent orange power off their fingertips. I would always hold my crumpled bag in my lap until the coast was clear. My lunch always consisted of 3 main items: 1. a smushed half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (strawberry jelly mind you, which of course I loathed but blackberry preserves where "too expensive") 2. a mealy red apple (the kind you know has been sitting on the bottom of the apple pyramid at the grocery store for weeks and then goes on sale for 30 cents per pound.) 3. stale tortilla chip crumbles from the bottom of the bag. (those sharp tiny triangles cut the roof of my mouth.)
Sometimes there was a "treat." A box of raisins or one generic fig newton.
If my mother felt especially generous, she would take the time to spread nonfat cream cheese on a bitter celery stalk. By the time it got to me, of course if would be warm but it might as well been rock candy to me. I remember once when my mom was sick, my dad prepared our lunches. When I got to school I pulled out a can of tuna and one napkin. Not the cool little tuna packs with the crackers and relish and the cute little plastic spoon. Just a regular can of tuna, with no way to open it much less drain the smelly water. I shoved it back in my backpack before anyone saw. I took it as a personal assault and fumed on the bus the whole way home. When I arrived home I threw the bag on the bed next to my sleeping mother who was surrounded in a sea of used tissues.
"Just look at what your husband made me for lunch!" I shouted.
I liked to refer to my dad as "your husband" or "that man" when I was really mad even though I knew that was usually reserved for step-fathers...or so I'd seen on the WB. I stood there with my hands on my hips, waiting for an explanation.
"Honey, I'm really sick now. Can we talk about this later?"
I stormed out and slammed the door to my room. I felt bad about the whole thing until years later when a can of baked beans replaced the tuna.
We never had soda, except on 4th of July. This was the one day of the year we looked forward to more than Christmas. We'd go to the grocery store and watch wide-eyed as my mother loaded the shopping cart with bags of ice and cans of Pepsi, 7up, diet Coke and Root Beer. My brother and I would call dips on which ones we'd gulp down first. We knew mom only bought them because the party was always at our house and she didn't want people to think we weren't a traditional American family. Once the guests started to arrive my brother and I would sneak off darting behind grandparents and diving behind trees on our way to the cooler. There was no way she could keep track of how many we had as we sprinted for cover to the tree fort with the cold cans under our shirts. To this day, if given a full can, I 'll suck it down as if destroying the evidence before mom comes around the corner.
My mother did not bake cookies because when she did we'd all eat them in a single sitting because we hadn't had them in so long. It was a vicious cycle. One that mom gave up on. Dessert didn't mean the same thing to us as it did to other families. Our dessert might have been a half of a peach or a few grapes. To compensate for this loss, I'd stand on the counter and look in the pantry for a square of bakers chocolate which I would cocktail with a packet of sweet and low to cut the bite. I'd tear open bags of mini marshmallows and smush them on a spoon full of peanut butter. I'd pour honey in a cup of half and half and gulp it down. I had a problem and I knew it even then at the age of 8. I only really knew I was being "abused" when I went to over to my friends house for the first time. She had a cookie jar, which until then I had only seen in comic strips. And there were cookies in them. Heaven. My friends mom actually baked so much that she would have to keep extra cookies in the freezer. Oatmeal chocolate chip, flaky peanut butter, snickerdoodles! My brother and I would go over there and make ourselves sick with all the cookies. Years later my friend told me her mom used to "I'd better make some cookies because the Jenkins kids are coming over." She had to have an extra hidden stash.
My relationship with food hasn't changed much. I don't drink soda, I try to avoid cookies but I still eat ice cream standing with the freezer open in case "someone" comes in and finds me.