Parent to Parent
Suburban Fried ChickenBy Denise A. DiPonzio It started as a competition between my mother and myself: which of us would become the next Martha Stewart? Then it grew into a hobby and eventually a way of life. I am talking about domestication.I buy postage stamps that match my living room décor. I fold napkins to resemble miniature sleeping bags and put the silverware to sleep (as my children like to tell it.) I name my china patterns after certain celebrities I cater for. I follow the perforations to evenly tear off a sheet of toilet tissue. And I care that the tag is not in view when I refold the ironed hand towel to hang back on its rack. I am not fastidious, just well mannered. So it is not surprising that I gazed down at my third swaddled infant, pictured him moving into his first apartment, and deciphered if he would place his drinking glasses upright in the cupboard or place them upside down to keep them clean longer. Would his toilet paper roll pull from underneath or rest at the top? Who was I kidding? Beer comes in its own container; you don't need a glass for it. And his toilet paper would never even make it to the holder. It is more convenient to leave it on the sink counter or the back of the toilet. I was aghast imagining then, where would he put his coordinating Kleenex box and bubble bath accessories? Boys – that is right, God blessed me with three boys. They use the back of their hand and their sleeve to wipe their nose and what man have I ever known to lollygag in his dirty bath water? Their pediatrician will ask how high they can count, if they can trace a circle and if know how to pedal a tricycle. Sadly I shake my head to the latter two but then I have an epiphany: Should I amuse the doctor and point out that when my toddlers spot the Golden Arches they know to scream for chicken nuggets? That has to count for something. By the age of two my sons were suppose to have a fifty-word vocabulary. Did I frantically drive home to grab a notebook and pen? No. I didn't even wait to get home. I searched under the car seat for that crumpled up fast food bag I hid two weeks earlier and had been meaning to throw out when the boys weren't looking. How dare I go without them! Wildly I started listing my toddlers' single-syllable words counting in my head…. ten, twenty-seven, forty-six, chicken nuggets; that should count as four! My boys never played with the Fisher Price See'n Say. Forget what sound a duck makes, what the cow says or how a pig goes. It wasn't important that the chicken clucked or why it crossed the road, they were taught why it was imperative to use boneless and skinless before frying. Early on they mimicked sounds from the blender, the mixer, the $400 copper Cuisenart food processor that perfectly matched my copper canister set and cupboard doorknobs. Martha would be proud on both accounts-the electrical imitations and the overly priced appliance. I am forty-one and back to counting stretch marks instead of single-syllable words. Poignantly I admire my body for the purpose it was put here on Earth-to give birth to my beautiful children. Unconsciously I contemplate the fact that they scarred me for life and how to settle the score. Grown children may not do as we did but they know they can always come home to reap the benefits. As mothers we can only instill, suggest and pray. One thing I know for sure is that fighting my mother for the "Queen of Domestication" title paid off. Especially when my twenty-one year old son grunts on how it is only here, in my suburban house, that he is forced to sit down at the kitchen table with napkin on lap to eat his finger-licking-good fried chicken-on my Dennis Hopper china, with a fork and knife, in candlelight. Denise A. DiPonzio is a mother who lives in Brockport. Genesee Valley Parent Magazine Copyright. |
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