The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree

A couple days ago I opened our freezer and three bananas fell out. What's funny is that I didn't even bat an eye at this. It wasn't until I was trying like mad to maneuver these black frozen fruits back into place among the 15 other frozen bananas in the door of the freezer that it struck me as odd and reminded me of time when frozen bananas fell out of a freezer.

 Bananas used to fall out of our freezer all the time when I was growing up. When bananas got too ripe that's where they'd go; squirreled away to be made into banana bread. Trouble was we only made banana bread like three times a year, but there were new bananas added to the stash a couple times a month. 

When I was about 15 or 16, in that lovely transitional phase from an angelic child into responsible adult--that phase where you are right 110% of the time and you can completely lose your cool or break down in tears at the drop of a hat (actually...that still sounds really familiar...). Anyway, it was summer. I was in search of some ice for iced tea, because I was the lone dissenter in a family vote that decided a hot tub would be a better investment than air conditioning.  open the freezer. Bananas fall out. And it wasn't just like three bananas, it was the mother-load. Like 12 or 18 bananas came tumbling out of the freezer and went shooting across the kitchen floor. I'd reached a breaking point. Why did my MOTHER insist on saving these bloody bananas when she hardly ever made banana bread? In what was likely the most rebellious move of my teen years I started ripping bananas out of the freezer and throwing them into the garbage. No wait, they'd see the bananas in the garbage. I carried the bag of nearly forty--yes FORTY--bananas out to the yard, marched over to our vegetable garden and started digging. I dug a hole, chucked the bananas into it and then filled what little space was left in the hole with dirt. I marched back into the house, got my ice tea, picked up my Seventeen magazine and carried on with my day.

I learned to put bananas in the freezer from my mom. I'm not sure where she picked it up. Probably from her mom. If left to my own devices I fall asleep on the couch by 8:30pm, so does she. I leave clothes in the washer for days at a time (which irritates the hell out of Keegan--so much so that he's taken on a considerable amount of the laundry chores). My mom goes days without washing her hair. So do I. (And yes, it still looks better than yours.) A quick trip to the grocery store can turn into a two hour event if I bump into someone I've not seen in a while. I used to worry that my mom had been in a car accident or kidnapped when it took her four hours to get milk and avocados from WinCo--20 minutes from our house. I got a recipe for the best pie crust you've ever had from my mom, and the best eggnog.

I hope I get her skin, because at 56 she looks like she could be 40. I hope my childbirth experiences mirror hers, or at least her resistance to physical pain and her resilience. I thank my lucky stars that my older brother, a nine and a half pound wonder, didn't scare her into adoption. Because at 110 lbs I am sure she had a hell of a time working him out. She's the most creative person I've ever met, and she'd do anything for family. It's not always been sunshine and roses for her, but the show must go on, and she's done it with charisma and grace.

It's a modern world we live in, girls today have a lot of options, but what I want to be most when I grow up is exactly like my Mom.




Happy Birthday, Mom!

I love you.