Help from Home

By the end of the second week of the Cube Steak War, my children were leaving me sticky-notes on toilet paper rolls, the refrigerator door and our dogs’ food bowls.  “Goddammit dad whatever you did to piss mom off just apologize so she will start cooking again.”  By the end of the third week, we were getting calls from the mothers of our children’s friends, telling us that our kids were all right and asking if they could stay for dinner---assuring us that someone would drive them home after they had eaten.  By the end of the fourth week, our daughter announced that she had decided to become a vegetarian.  Our son had quit the basketball team and taken a job at a Mexican restaurant down in the harbor.  Calls to my Mom to urge her to hurry up with those recipes were never returned.  Finally, on a Sunday morning as I sat at the kitchen table making a menu and a grocery list for Week Five, the phone rang.  It was my mother.  


I immediately turned on the voice recorder that I had attached to my telephone line as a part of a scheme to trap junk sales callers who flagrantly ignored the fact that I had put us on the “DON’T CALL” list.  I was not going to let Mom off the phone until she had read to me at least half a dozen recipes for my favorite childhood meals.  The following is a transcript of that conversation.  


ME:  Hello, Mom?  Where the Hell are my recipes?  I need them, Mom.  This is my family we’re talking about.  


MOM:  Oh, was that you on the answering machine?  I thought it was your no-good Uncle Jimmy out on another bender.  You know, he….


ME:  Mom, stop and listen to me.  I really need those recipes.  Kate is making me cook four days a week while she works, you know?  And the kids, they won’t come home.  And, I’m losing weight, Mom, and you know I have to eat well because of my diabetes.


MOM:  She is really making you cook?  This isn’t a joke?  I’m sorry, Honey.  She seemed like such a nice girl.  


ME:  Look, just give me a couple of the basics…. Meatloaf, potato salad, porcupine meatballs, beef stew…..  My marriage depends on it.


MOM:  Is it the sex?


ME:  What?  Mom, no I….


MOM:  Your father and I, he always liked my cooking, but he really was never very good in bed….  


ME:  Mom, just send me what you’ve got.


Three days later, I received an envelope in the mail.