Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two minutes
Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two meals to plan
Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two minutes
How do you measure? Measure a year?
In daylights,
In sunsets,
In midnights,
In cups of coffee,
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
In Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two minutes
How do you measure a year in a life?
How about love?
Measure in love…
Seasons of love…
Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two minutes
Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two meals to plan
Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two minutes
How do you measure a life of a woman or a man?
—Seasons of Love. Jonathan D. Larson.
It never ceases to amaze me how powerless we are as to which memories our brain (specifically the hippocampus) stores. This morning, when my eyes snapped open, I thought of my mother and all of the meals she cooked for us, her family of six. When I came home from the hospital with my newborn daughter, I stood in our bedroom, in a pink-flannel nightgown, and literally wailed, “I am going to have to cook for 18 years . .
.”
Overwhelmed doesn’t begin to describe the feeling. It seemed impossible. I crunched the numbers:
365 dinners x 18 years = 6,570
365 breakfasts x 18 years = 6,570
5 x 52 lunches = 260
5 x 52 after school snacks = 260
2 meals added to help the rhyme = 2
13,662 meals
Due to Jesse’s passion for dance, it was much less really, because we often “did the drive-through” after her classes, as much as I had previously tried to keep her diet clean. (A lost cause after my stepson took her for her first Happy Meal at 18 months.)
I don’t think we four children thanked my mother much. Around the table, we would pass my mother’s scrumptious creations, without thought to how she might have felt about being chained to her 6-burner stove year after year. I remember sulking to the dinner table nightly, sulking because the meal interrupted my “after school nap,” a nap necessitated by my addiction to reading under the covers into the dawn. After dinner, my older brother and I would clean up, loading the dishwasher specifically to our mother’s directive, only aware of the homework that awaited us or who we would call on the phone once the kitchen counters sparkled. My mother never complained about all of the cooking, in fact, now, I am certain it was a creative release for her, which I also never considered until she was gone. I only knew that I hated to cook, further diminishing her role in my eyes. She hadn’t wanted me in the kitchen while she cooked, so I never really learned.
Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two minutes
Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two meals to plan
Thirteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-two minutes
How do you measure a life of a woman or a man?
Do you ever think about the measure of your mother’s life?
