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Published on 08/12/1996 All articles from this issue

A View from the Hills

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By Mary Cristy

The great earth mother

Our No. three son calls me "mother of all mothers." This is because the moment one of our children or grandchildren crosses our threshold, I, like most women who juggle an avocation and a vocation, revert to the great earth mother mode.

Beginning with OHMIGOSHWHATTLICOOK? A flurry of preparation ensues, followed by "the great supermarket invasion," where the problem of myriad choices bewilders, enthralls, and bedevils the shopper.

No matter that I was eyeball deep and fully absorbed in research for a story on "those wonderful women in their flying machines" and their legendary exploits in World War II.

No matter if the 3,000-word manuscript I'm committed to deliver is about to be seven and one half days overdue. When like a "blare of bugles, and a ruffle of drums" THE KIDS ARE COMING!! sounds, I charge back into "mother" mode like a rampaging Cape buffalo.

There is that within the women of my generation, programmed for kinder, kucken, and kirche, that rises as naturally and inevitably as mist in bog...and thereby hangs a tale of deadlines missed and career opportunities lost.

That your "kid" is 6 feet 7 inches tall and four years older than you were when you bore him matters not an iota. The pilot is set on "automatic" and you go where it takes you. The maternal juices rise. Your baby is home! Your "baby" is a man (or woman) grown, but you are swept along in a euphoric haze of expectation and anticipation.

Your calm, computerized, routine is about to click on "disrupt." Your fat-free diet is flying away on the wind. You will cook all his (and your, if the truth were told) favorite foods. There will be chocolate in the house, butter, brownies, pork roast, or ribs.

Well, you don't do this every day. Neither does the kid.

The kid neither needs nor wants this whirling dervish routine. He'd be just as comfortable without your pats to his brow and your attempts to turn him into pate de foie gras. But he understands. This is a mother thing. You catch his quizzical gaze and he grins. His tolerant shrug says it's OK. He knows you're in the grip of something bigger than both of you.

The kitchen is a glorious mess, redolent of herbs, spices, hot biscuits and gravy. Your husband sniffs appreciatively.

"It's a good thing you come home once in a while," he tells the kid. "It's the only time I get a square meal anymore."

Tomorrow it will be over. The kid will be on his way home.

The guest room will be pristine. The bedspread will be taut, but not as taut as those wonderful women in their flying machines would have had them. In The Air Transport Auxiliary a quarter would have had to bounce when tossed on their cots.

I'll be getting back to the research and the manuscript, and waiting for the next phone call to signal the arrival of a son, a daughter-in-law, a grandchild.

Somehow, a certain kind of woman, and, for better or for worse I'm one, never feels more virtuous, more vital, more in tune with the world and all the good things in it, than when she's cooking up a storm for her kid.