I didn’t know what I was getting myself into back in the seventh grade when I decided to earn the Girl Scout cooking badge and baked an apricot tea ring—something I have never baked since, but I remember as being really tasty.
That one little pastry became the portal for the rest of my life of mixing and stirring and baking and cooking and feeding the vast multitudes of people who have eaten at my table. I have often suspected that unseen to me I have some kind of sign on my forehead that lights up when hungry people come near and blinks, “I can feed you. Please let me feed you.”
When I found two Eastern box turtles in my compost pile this past summer munching on tomatoes and cantaloupe peels, I became convinced that I am probably—like many other LDS mothers of large families—destined to feed people.
“Do you think this is a Golden Corral buffet?” I asked the turtle as he (or she?) gazed up at me with a chunk of tomato hanging out of his mouth, one short little arm holding down another piece. He didn’t answer—just blinked and seemed to be reading my forehead.
As I looked deeply into his eyes, I wondered how I put so many meals on the table for seven kids and whatever friends seemed to be visiting. A friend with six kids tried throughout the years to convince me it was just easier to let everyone scavenge for food every evening, but I think that method was easier for her because many nights her kids were at my table. “Do you do this every night?” I remember one of her sons saying in awe as he sat down to a pork chop dinner.
I learned one way—pay attention parents of pre-teenagers—to keep your teens at home is to feed them and all their friends. It just takes one time to bake warm, gooey chocolate chip cookies and suddenly you are known as the mother who always has warm, gooey chocolate chip cookies . . . and stacks of grilled cheese sandwiches . . . and pancakes in the morning.
Then the in-laws come along and you can make a lot of points feeding them. When my daughter and her husband, Matt, lived in town, more Sunday afternoons than not my sister would call and say, “Matt wants to know what you have baked for tonight?” “What does he want, and why can’t he call me himself?” I would answer. “He doesn’t want to assume anything,” she would answer. I scoffed.
Now they live two-and-a-half hours away, and I would love to have a reason to break out the griddle and cookie sheet on a Sunday night.
For years and years, I was the ward activities director in our small ward, which averages maybe 120 every Sunday. I headed up hot dog dinners, covered dish dinners, soup and salad dinners, chili dinners, and finger food buffets. Valentine’s dinners, Fourth of July cookouts, end-of-school picnics, back-to-school socials and many, many Christmas dinners. A bishop was finally compassionate and decided to release me. I just had to survive one more hamburger cookout.
Our activities through the years had averaged anywhere from 15 people to maybe 60 on a good night. My last cookout brought out 95 people. They just kept coming. My poor son was manning the grill and cooked until two propane tanks were empty. In fact, those last hamburgers were much too pink, so I think the tanks ran out before he stopped cooking. But no one died of food poisoning, which would have made my last activity really memorable, I suppose.
It just seems to be my destiny. I embraced it long ago, although when all these kids and in-laws finally get out of graduate school and get jobs, I think we will spread the joy around a little more, and I will show up empty-handed and hungry on their doors.
(I went for the joke there—my daughters-in-law and daughters are really good about helping to cook and bringing food when they come.)
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to always have a plan for food. When my son and daughter-in-law who live an hour away come to visit in the evening, I always ask, “Will you need supper?” “No, we’ll eat before we come,” my son says.
Then as soon as he walks in the door, he opens the refrigerator and says, “What do you have to eat? We didn’t eat.”
Now I know to always save supper for them. Life’s just better that way.
One afternoon this summer, I was convinced the sign on my forehead was flashing really brightly. My two stepsons and wives plus five grandchildren were visiting. Everyone was on vacation, and I alone was working. (Poor me!) I left for work with the kitchen full of sandwich fixings, leftovers, fruit, crackers, and a chocolate cake. I came back after a couple of interviews and walked into the living room where everyone was relaxing.
The four-year-old grandson came barreling across the room, skidded to a stop in front of me, and demanded loudly, “I’m hungry!” I looked around and asked stupidly, “Am I the only one who can feed this child?”
The better question would have been, I suppose, “Am I the only one with a flashing sign on my forehead?”
All these memories went through my mind as I looked gently down upon my little Eastern Box turtle. It seemed to be one of those moments that eternity paused as I made a decision. So I sighed and went back inside, returning in a few minutes with a fresh sliced tomato to replace the decomposing one and a little container of water to wash it down if he needed it.
It just seems meant to be.