Age: 49
I didn’t realize she was a mother right away, but I really should have. A multicolored headband pulled back a mass of tousled frizzy hair. She wore a light blue tang top more for comfort and ease than for fashion. The crows feet at the corners of her eyes and the smile lines on either side of her face were sure signs of someone who had spent her entire life caring for others. The bond of a mother and her children is a strange one. It’s a life that’s lived vicariously. At the beginning the child needs the mother, but as time goes by it seems like the mother needs the child. I guess that’s why she seemed so nonplussed when she shared that one of her sons and two of her many grandkids are living back at home with her. It gives her someone to take care of and it gives her something to do in her retirement.
But lately things have been short around grandma’s house. She never skips a meal and always makes sure that her babies have something to eat, but she’s feeling the crunch. She finds herself stuck with same amount of money coming in from social security every month, but the costs of everything else going up. Like her rent which just went up to $675 a month and that is without the utilities! There is a hope that things will level out again, that gas prices will go down, and that the economy will step out of this funk that it is in. But in the meantime she is stuck trying to supplement her income with a shrinking pool of resources.
She knows how fortunate she is. She has seen times like these before and so was ready for this one. I sat in awe as I listened to her talk about how to make food stretch. Whatever doubts I had about her qualifications for mother of the year melted away as she expounded her domestic advice and encouraged me to take counsel. “I just make a pot of red beans and rice and leave it sit on the stove. Whenever someone is hungry they can come and get a bowl and that will feed the whole house for a day…Instead of buying steaks you should buy a roast…Meat is just getting so expensive that’s why I don’t buy lunchmeat. I buy in bulk and if someone wants a sandwich they can cut the meat themselves.”
While I sat and listened to her share proverb after proverb I found myself writing less and listening more. I began to fall into the blessing of her wisdom and warmth and I began to imagine what it would be like to have a grandmother like her. And when she finally said that she had to go I stood up to shake her hand and wondered why I hadn’t seen the mother in her before.
My answer only came with time. I only have a memory of that day now, but what I do remember is the connection that I began to feel as she became less of a client sitting across from me in an office and more of a person just like me. I had missed it at first because I thought I was different from her, but like all good mothers’ she helped me to see the connection that I never thought existed allowing me to receive her wisdom and allowing her to live through me.
To learn more about the work of the Rock River Valley Food Pantry visit their website or call them at 
(815) 965-2466
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