My mother loves people by feeding them. She stuffs them with good food-meat, usually, with potatoes and dark gravy. The kind of gravy that has become a lost art, perhaps because we spend less time cooking, less time learning our cuts of meat, less time pushing food on loved ones.
My mother loves people by feeding them. She stuffs them with good food-meat, usually, with potatoes and dark gravy. The kind of gravy that has become a lost art, perhaps because we spend less time cooking, less time learning our cuts of meat, less time pushing food on loved ones.
For many of us mothers, feeding people is our love language. When we are too intimidated to express our feelings, particularly when sadness in involved, we resort to casseroles. Bake chicken, cut up carrots, and roll out pie dough. These are the hand motions of a friend who longs to soothe a mother’s broken heart. And somehow, miraculously, they do.
When Lisa’s husband, Brett, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the first person she called was Beth. Lisa’s voice was icy with shock, Beth recalls. Then suddenly, as she was speaking she broke down and sobbed. Beth could hear her heaving, gasping for air between cries, and Beth remembers the quick conclusion she drew as well: “With two small children, one only nine months and the other two and a half years old, I wondered how Lisa was going to make it. What about the kids? I thought about the sadness of those two small kids growing up without their dad, but then I felt sorrier for Lisa. She was so young. No one this young should have to endure this kind of trauma, I thought.
