Fruit Cocktail and other trials of mothering

I have been thinking a lot about food, parenting, and fruit lately. This meandering has lead me to a strange childhood fruit cocktail memory. I hope I haven't shared this already. I'm too lazy to check.

When we were children, we loved fruit cocktail in the can. The can only had one to two cherries --- maraschino cherries that don't really look like cherries. You know what I'm talking about. So when we had fruit cocktail, Mom would cut the cherries up and make sure each of the three children had the same number. We always checked.

As Mark and I ate fruit cocktail that a church man gave us this morning, I told him that story. He looked at me quizzically, a pretty standard Mark look. I offered him the cherry. He said, "No thanks, I don't care for that."

I also remember that for awhile Mom bought three kinds of cookies at the store (Oreos, chocolate chip, and wedding cookies) and divided them into three containers. Each child had his/her own container and when it was gone, it was gone for... I guess a couple of weeks. I remember checking to make sure my siblings didn't steal my cookies. I remember trying to make mine last longer than the others, but I doubt I was successful.

Equality was very important to Mom. She counted jelly beans into our Easter baskets and chocolates into our Christmas stockings, making sure each of us had exactly the same amount. She told me that she always spent the exact same amount on each of us for Christmas and birthday presents. I don't remember thinking that my brother and sister got more than me (except the cherries), but I guess she made sure the issue never came up. Even if one of us needed something and the others didn't, she'd make sure we either all got it or no one did. She continued this even as we grew to adults.

I don't know if this is a good plan. It seems that "to each according to his need" would be more reasonable, but then, I'm a pretty needy person.

Sometimes I worry about giving my children equal treatment, and I know that right now, I'm not. Will someone be short changed, or will it even out in the long run? I think I need to be mindful of the way I give attention --- material and emotional. But just as some children don't need as much help materially, some don't want as much emotional contact. I try to give them all of what they need and some of what they want. And I think that's working out, but I do think I need to evaluate the whole thing.

And of course, stop rambling...

Feet

This is one of those stories I probably shouldn't tell, but am going to anyway. I'm going to tell it anyway for a couple of reasons. First, I've already told just about everyone whose opinions matter to me, and so far, they have not condemned me completely (at least to my face.) And second, I'm just like that. I tell stories I shouldn't tell.

So this is it. I have a thing about shoes and feet. Nothing kinky. It's just that when I was a kid and asked for new shoes, my mother would show me her feet and say, "When I was your age, we couldn't afford new shoes and I had to wear the same shoes for three years and my toes got all twisted and bent." And her toes were twisted and bent. Her second toes, which should have been longer than her first toes were curled under like a corkscrew. Her baby toes were mashed in so they hid under her feet. It wasn't pretty at all.

So I wondered then, although I probably didn't say it out loud more than once, why she would subject us to the same torture, when they could afford to buy us shoes? Why did we have to go through this every year? Yes, once a year. It's not like we were Imelda Marcos wannabees. We each had one pair of shoes each year, until we started taking gym, then we had a second pair of sneakers.

Now, in my infinite wisdom, like so many others before me, I swore my children would always have shoes that fit. They were from K-mart mostly, but I bought new pairs two or three times a year if I needed to. God as my witness, my children would not have crooked toes!

OK, there were times when I let the boys wear their shoes until the soles fell off. There was that sort of embarrassing incident, when one of them came home with slightly used shoes from the poor children bag at school. The slightly used shoes were Nikes or something, and better than I would have bought, so I sent a thank you note and left it at that. But I vowed to do better.

So, now, we come to this last week.

My baby had needed new shoes for a month. His toes were sticking out. The soles of the shoes rubbed blisters on his poor feet. By the time I bought him new shoes in an early morning emergency trip to the 24 hour Walmart, his feet looked like raw meat.

I rinsed them, salved them, and swathed them in aloe infused sockies. He rested all day. I felt terrible. The next day he put on his new shoes and flew off to school. He kicked the ball, ran the bases, leaped tall buildings. All it took was new shoes and a mother with the sense to buy them.

Ironically, coincidentally, or karmically, I stepped on a safety razor this weekend, so I am now the one with the hurt foot. I rinsed it, salved it and wrapped it in Mark's aloe infused sockies. But somehow, I knew I deserved it.