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Previous Guest Columns:
Driving Miss Crazy from Barbara Madden
We've All Been Shot, by Jackie K. Cooper
Telemarketing Woes, by Amy Eason
Valentine's Day Lesson, by Bob Schwartz
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Guest Column
Hot off the press!
Kristen
Twedt writes for The Hattiesburg American. Catch her weekly newspaper column
each Monday by visiting
www.HattiesburgAmerican.com and clicking on "Moms on the Run!"
You can also hear Kristen on Mississippi Public Broadcastings, MPR. Click here to search for Kristen's commentaries on Mississippi Public Radio. She is also the author of the Crazy Cat Book series!
Visit Kristen's Website at www.KristenTwedt.com
Babies, Booze and Bread Pudding
Our friends, Wilson and Amy, dined at a local restaurant with their infant son. They finished their meal and topped it off with a warm plate of bread pudding. Sam howled for a taste, so his dad shoveled a big spoonful his way.
“I don’t guess there’s any alcohol in that, is there?” Amy asked.
“Nah,” Wilson declared. “You know, even if there had been, that stuff just cooks right out. Look, he loves it!”
Sam ate the dessert with great gusto. According to his dad, the boy was none too pleased when the spoon remained empty and it was time to go. Just as they stopped at the register to pay, a server emerged from the kitchen with a massive tray of hot bread pudding. Amy and Wilson stood with jaws on the linoleum as the waiter lifted a bottle of whiskey and doused the steaming confection with a saturating stream of booze.
I’m thinking that was a long ride home for Sam’s dad.
Maybe things like that happen for a reason. Granted, bourbon was not made for babies, but Sam is perfectly fine. Perhaps these minor exposures to danger prepare us for the catastrophes, or at least make us realize our kids can weather life better than we give them credit.
To hear the stories of people who grew up years ago when most infants were born at home and baby food meant mashing up whatever was on hand, it is no small wonder that so many of them made it to adulthood. I have heard how women would fashion slings from flour sacks to hold their babies while they suckled and napped as mom picked cotton. Images of no electricity, no indoor plumbing and no daycare for kids back then makes the business of rearing babies today seem like it should be a snap.
But, it is not. I suppose this is because that even with all our modern conveniences, the job of being mom will forever hold great challenges. We will always worry. We may not worry about the cow going dry, but we do worry over what is in the milk we drink. We may not concern ourselves with horseshoes and lamp oil, but we do think about speed limits and drunk drivers.
Moms will always fret over how the world molds their babies. Sometimes I wish I could bind mine close to me with a flour sack and never let them from my sight. Then, I realize it wouldn’t be long before a hefty round of bourbon for all of us would seem like a grand idea.
The key, I think, has something to do with faith, a belief that they will be fine, even when they escape the apron strings. Life, no matter how protected, harbors certain unpredictable consequences. Our children have to live and learn. After all, we parents grew up in spite of a million things that can go wrong and did. We teach our children through our own endurance how to willfully overcome threats far trickier than dads who feed us booze on our bread pudding while we are still in diapers.
Copyright © 2004 Kristen Twedt
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