Word to your mother

Sunday was, in both the U.S. and Uruguay (and probably a number of other places, too), Mother´s Day. Last night, as I was cooking dinner, I suddenly realized how much more I appreciate the work the world´s mothers do after this year. I was making gnocchi (don´t judge me), completely from scratch - we´re talking boiling the potatoes, then mashing them, then adding the flour and making a dough, then rolling it out, then cutting it, then forming the gnocchi with a fork, and then cooking them. As you can guess from the description, this is not exactly a quick process. To cook a kilo of potatoes, you have to bring a LOT of water to a boil first, and then boil a lot of potato in it...it takes time. Then, you have to mash them...it takes time, and a little bit of physical exertion. Then, making the dough - you get some seriously sticky hands when you mix together flour and mashed potato (plus a little salt, black pepper, and oregano), and then get them stickier when you roll the dough (and it´s a lot of dough to roll). From there, it´s cutting several dozen gnocchi and forming each and every one of them by sliding them up the tines of a fork. I started at 6 PM; it was 8:30 PM when I ate my gnocchi al pesto. I made enough to eat for the next several days, but still - it´s plenty of work to make things from scratch.

Mothers have done this, every day, for milennia. Our kitchen at the church is about on par with an early-20th century kitchen for level of technology...not much in the way of time-saving gadgets, but even then, I still have pre-made pastas, canned foods, and a variety of other little aids at my disposal. My several-times great grandmother in Italy, however, wouldn´t have - she would´ve been making her gnocchi by hand, cooking all of her sauces from scratch, stoking a wood-burning stove to do everything. I can´t imagine cooking for families of 6 or greater every day like this. It´s a full-time job, especially when you add clean-up to it. Plus, then there´s laundry to do, houses to clean, the grocery shopping, and...the kids.

Working with elementary age children, even for just a few hours once or twice a week, takes plenty of energy. They´re sweet and delightful bundles of energy at their best; willfull, taxing little wildebeests at worst. To be able to run herd on the kids, AND cook, AND clean, AND shop, AND do a million other little things and stay sane - THAT is some hard work...if I were offered my pick of a Herculean labor or being a stay-at-home mom for the rest of my life, I´d say bring on the Hydra or the Augean Stable.

AND, this being 2008, many moms work, at least part-time, many full-time. My God. That´s a full time job on top of another full time job.

So, moms of the world - here´s to you. You do an amazing job, every day, and hardly ever get thanked for it. Thank you for your dedication, work, and above all, love, and (if you´re in the neighborhood)...have some gnocchi on me.