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<\/a><\/p>\nDear Peg,<\/p>\n
I am writing to thank you for saving my mother\u2019s life, not in terms of death and dying, but in the sanity sense of the word.\u00a0 She clung to your 1960 cookbook, The I Hate to Cookbook like a life raft, that slim volume always right next to the kitchen telephone.<\/p>\n
The recipes in your book were beside the point.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think she every made your \u201cHurry Curry,\u201d or \u201cClam Whiffle (a soufll\u00e9 that any fool can make)\u201d\u00a0 It was your irreverent tone that let her know someone out there was like her, chafing at the limitations of the stereotypical housewife \u2013 in her case a woman who had given birth to six children in ten years.<\/p>\n
The I Hate to Cookbook treads lightly, made it possible for my mother and her friends to laugh at their predicament and acknowledge the unspoken truths about the dreariness of the relentless obligation of three squares a day.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201c\u2026never compute the number of meals you have to cook and set before the shining little faces of your loved ones\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201c\u2026the average man\u2026wants to see you knead that bread and tote that bale, before you go down to the cellar to make the soap.\u00a0 This is known as the Woman\u2019s Burden.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAs we slog our way through the month\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYour husband won\u2019t take you out for enchiladas if he knows he can get good enchiladas at home.\u201d (A variation on the sage dating advice to the buxom farmer\u2019s daughter, \u201cWhy buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?)<\/em><\/p>\n Your cookbook positions a hatred of cooking as a small blemish in a housewife\u2019s repertoire, similar in concept to an otherwise excellent batter who just can\u2019t hit a curveball, a flaw that could be corrected with some coaching. \u00a0But it was more than that, wasn\u2019t it?\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t just the cooking you were referring to, it was the whole package of housewifery.\u00a0 That was my mother\u2019s interpretation.<\/p>\n She was a bright woman whose senior college thesis explored the boot and shoe industry in the 1800s, charting the movement of the profession alongside westward expansion.\u00a0 Post-college, her intellectual life stagnated midst the piles of diapers and the daily grind of preparing meals, first for her growing family, and then a separate meal for my father who came home later.<\/p>\n She found release in writing humorous ditties for special occasions \u2013 birthdays, anniversaries, good-by parties, and I remember a couple of lines that she sang as she went about her household chores:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened to that priceless precious knowledge<\/em><\/p>\n I learned at Vassar college.<\/em><\/p>\n I spend my days washing sinks filled with grit,<\/em><\/p>\n Old toothpaste, crud and slimy spit.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n She had some irreverent pet phrases, which I now realize came directly from your book, including \u201cfur-bearing\u201d to describe a moldy leftover languishing in the back of the fridge.\u00a0 She would refer to our \u00a0\u201cshining faces,\u201d as she set yet another dinner in front of us, but \u201cshining\u201d was a generous description.\u00a0 We were a bunch of snot-nosed bickering kids with muddy shoes and smudged cheeks, wolfing down a meal and bolting out of the kitchen in less time than it took her to cook it.<\/p>\n Was my mother a budding feminist, flailing against her sanctioned role as \u201cjust a housewife?\u201d\u00a0 Some cite Betty Friedan\u2019s tome, The Feminine Mystique, as the seminal book kicking off the women\u2019s lib movement.\u00a0 The book demolishes, demeans and destroys the 1950s era housewife, a brutal assault on my mother\u2019s identity.\u00a0 Friedan describes the housewife as an unwilling dupe, sucked into servitude by a patronizing, sexist and staunchly male-dominated society.<\/p>\n \u201cThe feminine mystique has succeeded in burying billions of American women alive.\u00a0 There is no way for these women to break out of their comfortable concentration camps except by finally putting forth an effort \u2013 that human effort which reaches beyond biology, beyond the narrow walls of home, to shape the future.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Did my mother think she was in a concentration camp? \u00a0Was she itching to respond to Friedan\u2019s strident call, take to the streets and join a vindictive mob of ball-busters?<\/p>\n No, she loved her family, loved being a mother and recognized that parts of my father\u2019s job were dreary and boring.\u00a0 She wanted the same recognition.\u00a0 Like you, Peg, it was enough to approach the housewife\u2019s role with wit and irreverence.\u00a0 Both of you weren\u2019t afraid to laugh at yourselves; that was ample antidote for her.<\/p>\n Peg, you also showed my mother that a cottage industry was a viable alternative to a salaried job.\u00a0 My father did not want my mother to work; a wife who worked suggested her husband was not a \u201cgood provider.\u201d\u00a0 Even the traditional jobs of \u00a0teacher or realtor carried the whiff of desperation.\u00a0 The idea that a job could provide women necessary intellectual or personal satisfaction was a ridiculous notion.\u00a0 Her family should be enough.<\/p>\n Your cookbook started as a cottage industry, didn\u2019t it?\u00a0 I imagine you laughing together with your friends, sharing stories of life in the trenches and planning the work-around cookbook.\u00a0 I see you waiting by your mailbox as the orders started to trickle in, then swelling to success beyond belief.\u00a0 Birdseye asked you to endorse their frozen foods.\u00a0 If you could find validation on your own with a cookbook, then why not her?<\/p>\n My mother threw herself into serial cottage industries, each one as quirky your cookbook.\u00a0 She published musical plays for children, a sing along book for senior citizens, and finally the most creative, Ol\u00e9, a Spanish-English dictionary of landscaping terms to help suburban housewives communicate with their landscaping crews.\u00a0 Phrases included \u201cThere\u2019s a bathroom inside the back door if you need it.\u201d<\/p>\n The project didn\u2019t have to make money, it didn\u2019t even have to break even.\u00a0 My father figured the psychiatry bills would be more costly.\u00a0 He was pleased that his wife found an outlet for her energy.<\/p>\n Like you, every day she rushed to the mailbox to check for Ol\u00e9 orders; the initial flush diminished to a steady trickle.\u00a0 Ol\u00e9 did not sweep the country; she received no offers from John Deere to endorse their lawn mowers, but it didn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 On her own she had conceived and birthed a creative idea.\u00a0 The trickle was enough validation.\u00a0 She had followed in your footsteps.\u00a0 Thank you for being her mentor.<\/p>\n Best Regards,<\/p>\n Liza Blue<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: Dear Peg, I am writing to thank you for saving my mother\u2019s life, not in terms of death and dying, but in the sanity sense of the word.\u00a0 She clung to your 1960 cookbook, The I Hate to Cookbook … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/download-1.jpg\")
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