Food for thought this day.
I remember when I was a little kindergarten girl, growing up on a farm in south-central Kansas, that every day for lunch my mom fixed me the very same thing. When the little red station wagon from school would deliver us back to our homes at noontime, I could always expect that my plate would be filled with boiled potatoes and peas, drizzled in butter with salt and pepper. She never failed to make that and I never remember complaining about eating it all the time. I was hungry and so I ate it. All of it. Even down to the last tiny little green pea swimming around on my plate.
Years later, many years in fact, my mom and I were visiting one day at her house there in Hutchinson. Some how or another, the subject of my eating that same meal over and over again came up. I remember asking Mom why it was that she always made it and her reply, given most sincerely, really made me pause to think. I have never forgotten what she said that day.
"Well, the reason why I always made you boiled potatoes and peas was because that's what we always had on hand. When you kids were little, we didn't have a lot of money. I guess you could say that we were poor."
I gotta tell you that her answer to me that day kind of surprised me. I never knew it was because we didn't have lots of money for things back then. Shoot, I just thought Mom liked fixing peas and boiled potatoes every day. Not once did I ever consider anything else and I began to look at my mother and father in a different light that day. My admiration for my parents grew and I began to realize just how hard it must have been to feed 7 hungry children each meal of the day. But we made it and not a one of us starved to death. In fact, we thrived.
Sometimes I like to think about the concept of having "just enough". You know, that idea that you don't need so much stuff in your life. The very notion of not wanting even more than you already have is beginning to be more and more appealing to me. As I have grown older, I've seen it increasingly in my thinking. In the years ahead, my hope is to "pare down" my possessions as I ponder about what means the most to me in my last years on earth. I like that way of thinking more and more each day. My mom planted the "seed" when she showed me that beginning with a meager meal at noontime, it was quite possible to survive on the bare minimum. Quite well as a matter of fact.
That day my mom told me about the peas and potatoes story, she also "spilled the beans" on why we always had hot buttered popcorn for our Saturday midday meal. Once again, we kids always figured that delicious treat was very special and we couldn't imagine how envious our friends would be if they only knew that we had popcorn all the time. The "word" according to our mom was this.
"Well, the reason we had popcorn every Saturday at noontime was because we had to wait until Saturday evening to go and get groceries in town. Your dad was paid once a week and when the food ran out on Saturday, making popcorn was a quick and inexpensive way to make sure that you had food in your belly."
Well there went my theory of our being given treats that other kids would have gladly accepted. They did it when the food ran out. It was just that. So plain and simple. We didn't starve to death or come down with any kind of vitamin deficiency or dreaded disease of the time. In fact, we continued to thrive.
There is much for me to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Day and if you are reading this then I am sure there is much for you as well. I'm glad that I had parents who cared enough about a little girl named "Peggy Ann" to have me, raise me up, and be there for me through all the times. The bountiful ones as well as the lean ones. Especially the lean ones.
And just for the record, I still love boiled potatoes and peas. And oh yeah, buttered popcorn too.
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