Secrets of a Jewish Mother: Real Advice, Real Family, Real Love (38 page)

Who doesn’t love a home-cooked dinner? We certainly do. In fact, what time can you come over to start the oven? Cooking for your family is the fundamental way to show you love them. Plus the studies show that kids who sit down with their families for dinner several times a week are less likely to get involved with negative influences like drugs and alcohol. How wonderful it is to walk into the house, smell something yummy and enjoy a good meal together. But the truth is that cooking dinner is a really hard thing to accomplish nowadays. You are the chauffeur from the time school ends until dinnertime, at which point everyone is starving and you haven’t had any time to cook. What’s left? The local fast-food joint or, if you splurge, the local diner. No wonder we are all fighting battles of the bulge.

Yes, it’s “do as we say, not as we do” time. Our advice is great, even if we don’t always use it ourselves. Cooking dinner makes a huge difference in family life. Probably the biggest single difference you can make to improve a host of things, from family harmony to education to good nutrition, is to sit down to a home-cooked meal together. But now that we think about it, it really doesn’t matter who does the cooking. So maybe you can find a more creative solution than we did. We hear personal chefs are fantastic, if you can afford them.

Growing up, Mommy cooked dinner five nights a week. She had a break on Tuesday night when Ethel made her famous fried chicken, and Wednesdays when it was “Dad’s night out” and we ate pizza. On Sundays, once in a while, we had Chinese takeout. Other than that, it was Mom. And speaking of dinner, we thought you might want to know a few of our favorite family recipes.

This whole section is what we should do—cook dinner.

The best we can—a combination of home-cooked meals, pizza and restaurants.

The bugaboo of all Jewish mothers: They interfere! Yes, they do. Most don’t even apologize for it. Why should they? Since when does interference mean a lack of love? The Jewish mother will argue, forcefully (is there any other way to argue?), that the act of interference is in fact one of the sincerest forms of love. Occasionally, phone calls must be eavesdropped upon and rooms must be searched. Sometimes a parent even has to go outside the family unit to remedy a bad situation. Do we believe that parents can set kids on the right path, with the right mix of love, attention and intervention? Yes, we do. We know this; we’ve done this.

Belief in one’s right to interfere in the personal affairs of an adult child, versus an underage son or daughter, may separate many Jewish mothers from other mothers. It definitely separates our mom from almost all other mothers we know. Mommy believes it is her right and her duty to interfere when necessary in her daughters’ lives, meaning our lives, no matter how old we are. She does not care that her words or actions will make us angry. Mommy’s conviction that she alone knows what is best for us propels her. She does not second-guess her decision, because it is not impulsive to begin with. If Mom has decided to interfere, she will move forward with the certainty that her cause is just and her actions are merited. Our mother firmly believes that we, her daughters, belong to her until she dies. Merely because we happen to be adults, with husbands and children of our own, is no reason for Mommy to stop parenting us as if we still lived under her roof. Metaphorically, we will never stop living under Mommy’s roof.