I am blessed not to have human children. I would have said I am blessed to have them, if I had them, too. I believe anyone who can read or see or hear this post has many things to be grateful for. I am one to advocate for being content. But I believe in moderation. Being content, in moderation and aiming for more, in moderation.
Back to the beginning then. I am blessed to have four cats in lieu of human offspring. And they are a blessing, of course, for they sleep a few hours a day – to name but one extra blessing. And I rarely need to sing for them or actually put them to sleep. They will do me this favor on their own without much help. “Raising cats” makes me in awe of my parents, many times, every single day. I will probably need to break this down to multiple posts to be able to count the types of things my parents did for us, and that make me in awe of them, every day.
Some of my furry children are picky about their food. One will not eat beef. One will eat fish but not with rice or vegetables. One will only eat salmon, not just any fish. And so on and so forth. Needless to say that I don’t cook this food for them. I buy the food at a store nearby. The purchase happens usually in daytime, in a peaceful environment, and the cost of the food is not a challenge. And if/when I don’t feel like going to the store, the shop owner will get the food delivered to my doorstep. I don’t serve my kids breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. All I have to do is get four little plates, once or twice a day, scoop some food in each of them, and serve the food where their royal highnesses would like to be fed. It used to be that they ate where I chose for them to eat, but I have now been tamed.
This obviously was not the case for my parents when they had to feed me as a child or as an adult (because they still do when I visit them). I am one of eight siblings – seven girls and a boy. We grew up in Lebanon during war time and economic hardship, for the most part. My father was a teacher and my mother a housewife. I don’t even want to start to imagine the cost of food during those times so I will just ignore that challenge. Yet we were served breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks every single day of our lives for as long as I remember. And if my memory serves me right, we were bloody picky about what we will eat and what we wouldn’t eat. Our food was not bought readymade. It was prepared, every single meal.
On school days, we were served a quick breakfast at home and then my dad usually would prepare sandwiches for each of us to take to school. The school had a shop that sold some kinds of food but we probably couldn’t have afforded the cost of buying it every day for all of us, and my Mom was never fond of “external food”. Daddy would ask each one of us what we wanted in those sandwiches. It was, of course, simple options like labneh, cheese, zaatar or cream cheese – but he would still ask. And he would wrap those sandwiches perfectly in sandwich paper and then put each set of them in a plastic bag and distribute them to the five or six of us going to school that year. My parents used to buy wafers or chocolates in bulk (think Costco style). On most days, we would find an Unica or a Hobby or some sort of treat in our food bags.
Every day when we returned home from school, lunch would be ready. There would be separate dishes so that each and all picky ones of us are satisfied. My jaw drops now at the thought that my mother had to make food types and varieties to satisfy six or seven children of varying ages and tastes, every single day, and that she and my father would gladly eat of. And she would always make sure that we all sit, wait for each other, and eat together. These were precious family times. Find me any mother who does this today and I will fall at her feet. (Yeah, I may be kidding about the falling bit because I have a knee issue)
My parents pampered us at a time when pampering seven children was truly an extreme luxury that only the richest of the rich could afford – financially and mentally. And like many pampered children, I only begun to realize this long after I left home and saw many of my siblings and friends become parents. Spending money on toys and food is no tough feat. Making food for your family from fresh produce and basic ingredients every single day is hard. If the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t taught us that yet, I don’t know that anything can.
We used to have breakfast for dinner when we were young. That is something I still enjoy a lot. The same options available for school wraps would be available again in the evenings, sans the rush. We would gather for dinner around a low height table that my Grandfather specially made so we can sit on the floor and eat. In winter, we would gather around it with a small electric or gas heater lit behind us, eat labneh, olives, cheese, zaatar, what-have-you and blabber away (or probably argue and fight). I can only imagine what a precious time that must have been for my parents. I found three of my cats sitting close to each other one day and thought, “Awwww, what a cute gathering!” But I can’t gather the cats around a table and have them chat away to glory about nonsense. That must be an event reserved for special people.
These were some food memories from my childhood that elevate my parents to saints in my eyes. There are of course many outstanding food memories where the parents went above and beyond — school birthdays, Ramadan Iftars, bake sales, etc… But those will probably have to wait for another post and another day.
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