Solo Practice

Mother's Day Post: I Remember the Burnt Goulash, But I'm Living the Lessons that Came With It

By Carolyn Elefant

In honor of Mother's Day, I unearthed this photo from my mom's college graduation in 1977.  My youngest sister, six years my junior is in front of me with the graduation cap on her head; with my two middle sisters, poking each other on the left.  My mom had completed a two year's associate degree when she married my dad in 1963.  But around the time I was eight (and my sisters were two, four and six), my mom decided to return to college to complete her degree and become a teacher. 

And thus began the seemingly endless years (probably three in all) of Monday night goulash.  My mom had classes on Monday nights, so my dad took charge of us girls.  Before leaving for class, my mom must have hastily thrown the stew meat, unpeeled carrots and potato chunks and a can of tomato sauce into the trusty Corningware Pot.  When my next youngest sister (red plaid shirt) and I arrived home from Hebrew school at 6:15 exhausted and starving, we'd sit down to the goulash (our younger sisters had eaten by then).  The meat was always burnt and dried out, yet the carrots never quite cooked through and the store-brand tomato sauce didn't do much to liven the otherwise charred flavor.  We'd complain about how disgusting it was, but we'd choke it down anyway, then finish up homework (well, I did - my sister, who is now a Phd. in molecular biology and tenured professor was a slacker back then) and head off to bed.  Meanwhile, my dad took the burnt pot to the sink and scrubbed it clean, loaded the dishwasher and got down on his hands and knees under the table, wiping up every little crumb.

Years later, I'm certain that I could never eat that awful burnt goulash if confronted with a plate of it (to my mom's credit, her cooking skills have somewhat improved, and these days, her grandchildren happily gobble down her stew).  But back then, the burnt goulash seemed as normal a part of my life as walking to school or playing in the creek behind our house with my sisters or raising mice and guinea pigs that my dad brought home from the lab.  As normal as a mom with four girls under the age of eight returning to school for a college degree, or a dad with a full time job getting four little girls fed and then scrubbing a dirty pot and wiping up crumbs under the table until 8:30 at night.  

And so, when I married and had children of my own, my husband's involvement wasn't something ever questioned or negotiated or discussed.  When I worked part time to stay home with my daughters when they were young, my husband simply understood that he'd watch our daughters on weekends or get them to bed when I raced to meet a deadline time.  Or that he'd work from home so he could fetch them from school when I'm out on travel or take them site-seeing in Paris while I gave a talk at UNESCO and went out to dinner with business colleagues afterwards.  My arrangement with my husband was never about women's liberation or making a point - it would have never occurred to me to do battle over child rearing because my parents had never done that.  Rather, sharing child rearing responsibilities was something that I viewed as normal as a mom who couldn't cook or girls going to college and then graduate school.

I've often wondered whether our children remember the negatives of growing up.  Seeing the photo of my mom's graduation makes me realize that of course they do, just like like I remember the stench and charred aftertaste of my mom's burnt goulash.  So I know that my own daughters won't forget the awful stew that I now leave in the crock-pot on nights that I can't get home in time to cook, or our messy house in a perpetual state of disrepair or my all too frequent tantrums  over misplaced homework and lost library books or my trips out of town where I leave them behind.  Perhaps my failings will traumatize my girls -- though hopefully, as for my sisters and me, the chaos of my daughters' childhood will make for funny stories (such as when dad let them wander the streets of Paris alone at 10 pm in search of a crepe!).  But more importantly, I hope that my daughters grow up thinking that it's just plain normal for either parent - a mom or a dad or both -  to run a law firm out of a home office or write books and blogs or travel to France on business with the family in tow. 

Meanwhile, Happy Mother's Day to my friends and fellow practicing lawyer-moms, Lisa Solomon, Niki Black, Julie Tower-Pierce, Mirriam Seddiq, Steph Kimbro and all the other parents (and if I haven't mentioned you, don't be shy; identify yourself in the comments!) who either by design or by accident (like my own mom) are reinventing what normal means for their own children.

Note:  Here's my last year's Mother's Day post, which remains one of my favorites.

Full post as published by My Shingle.com on May 10, 2010 (boomark / email).