Am I My Mother

I was looking at old family pictures several months ago and began comparing my body to that of my mothers.  My sons keep telling me I look like her, especially since I've aged.  We do share the same thin face, height and weight, and my body type from the waist up is similar to hers.   While the comparison is accurate, it isn't necessarily a fact that my body will have as long a life as her 94 years.  I developed high blood pressure at the age of 61 and my mother was 62 when hers was detected.  She had a fondness for a good homemade pie, ice cream and loved all types of candy.  Guess I do, too!  She did eat and cook very good and balanced meals for us, though, since she came from an era before fast or frozen foods.  What we ate was healthy plates of vegetables, beans and on Sunday, a good beef or pork roast.  Fried chicken and meat loaf was sometimes on the menu after she made her weekly visit to the butcher shop.  The veggies and eggs were farm fresh and usually bought at the local grocery market.  In the springtime Mom and Dad planted a vegetable garden giving us tomatoes and green beans fresh off the vine to eat during the summer months.  Mom always managed to gather enough vegetables and fruit for canning in late summer.  Our old pantry held many full canning jars for winter consumption.   The milk we drank was whole (no skim, 1 or 2% in those days) and was delivered to the side door every morning in quart glass containers by the milk man.  I loved that whole milk on cereal, but also on sliced fresh peaches or the strawberries we delightfully gathered from wild patches growing in the field near where we lived.  I remember lots of oranges being available for snacks, cut up in quarters served on a plate while listening to the radio or later on, the new TV. 

We also had two green apple trees growing in our yard on Honore Avenue.   If you waited for any of those little green sours to drop, they would not only be bruised but have a worm in them.  Sometimes we tried climbing the tree, stepping onto long branches to retrieve the biggest and most tart.  Most times we scooted back down empty handed since the apples were higher than we could climb.   More times than not we got yelled at for climbing in the trees.   We would then grab the clothes pole, a 6 foot tall 2x4 board with a long nail hammered into one end, off of the clothes line in the back yard and knock down all the apples we could reach.  Invariably, mom would see us eating those green apples and yell at us saying we were going to get a belly ache.....we never did!  I don't remember if she used the apples from our trees or bought different apples from the farm stands, but she made one very luscious apple pie.  She usually made more than one since there were so many family members.  And we never got a sliver of those pies until we cleaned our plates of whatever she had prepared that night for supper.  We served ourselves as we sat down to the family meal and were encouraged to take a spoonful of the vegetables we so hated.  If we put it on our plate, we had to eat it.  We always made room for the dessert Mom made, usually a couple of times a week, after those evening meals.  It seems, though, there was always an apple pie after our big Sunday dinner in those days. 

As you can see, we ate good healthy meals most of the time.  Ours was a blue collar family whose father was employed in a factory where the worker's unions periodically went on strike for better conditions and wages (mostly wages).  I don't recall the strikes lasting very long, but with the loss in pay during that time, every penny was stretched as far as possible.  It meant buying foods that filled us up while spending as little money as possible.   At those times my mother would make huge pots of white beans and fresh batches of delicious cornbread.  That sustained us for many, many weeks.  I don't think we ever got tired of those beans and cornbread.   It was a good, filling meal to keep hungry bellies happy.  Don't get me wrong, we were never the poor starving kids you see in many of today's third world countries, but money was tight most of the time.  To this day my sister makes that very same meal at our family reunions with big pots of beans and many pans of sweet buttered cornbread disappearing throughout the day.    We, as other families in those days, had hard times due to many situations.  Mom made sure we had three meals a day, especially a good filling breakfast before heading off to school.  I was never much of a breakfast person, but I do remember eating small bites of scrambled eggs and toast, oatmeal or cold cereal (Wheaties, I think), and always a big glass of cold milk.   That was the routine we were exposed to growing up in the 1950's.   As I grew older into the teen years I slept to the last minute before rushing to ready myself  in our one shared bathroom (mom made up a schedule with bathroom times for everyone in 15 minutes intervals) for the school day.  Sadly, I chose to skip breakfast during my morning routine in those years. 

Now, some 50 years later, I have put the breakfast routine back in my day as I continue on my quest to lose weight.  I am finally realizing what my mother and many other mothers of long ago knew about food and eating.  Breakfast is a must for the body to start the day.  Fueling in the morning gives your body a good, strong start and lessens the change of overeating at night.  We form habits throughout our lifetimes, some good, some bad, but the one good habit you want tostart and maintain is eating 3 healthy meals a day starting with a healthy breakfast.  Living to a ripe old age depends on many variables, but you can certainly have a longer life by monitoring the food and drink you choose to put into your body.  If you become overweight as you age (and most of us do), it might be time to reassess what and how much is being put into the body.   If you get your thoughts clear on what and when you're eating, how much you're eating and how it is affecting your health, then you can lose that weight.  It takes time and a realistic study of what works best for your body, knowing what is best for you and forming a plan of your own choosing.  My mother was blessed with a long life because she had some very good genes and understood the importance of good food.  She loved food, but had the courage to corral those overeating desires most of the time.  She gave in sometimes to those delicious cakes or pies, but for the most part she knew what to eat to maintain her health.   I, too, love food and have managed to find the balance needed to control the food intake and take care of my body.  Who knows, maybe I will live as long as my mother.  Even if I don't, I know the body that is laid out in that casket when my time comes will be a lot lighter for the bearers to haul out of the church.  But that is way down the road....at least I hope so. 

For now, I continue to march through this life knowing I may have the same body type as my mother, but am not her.  She did not define herself by how she looked or what she ate, nor do I.   I would rather be defined and remembered for my thoughts and deeds and not how I looked.   What impact I have on the lives of those around me, who know me, is very important.   This body will be long gone and mostly forgotten, but hopefully the words I speak and write will have much meaning for those lives and reside within them for a long time....maybe even pass it on.