Mom Eats Last

But also eats best

Last weekend, on a crisp fall evening, I wandered around a high school homecoming tailgate party and watched moms attempt to distract their children from the playground long enough to feed them a quick dinner. While struggling with the same feat, I collided with a fellow mom comrade trying to stuff a taco-in-a-bag in her mouth (with Ginger Rogers-like grace of course) while simultaneously managing the needs of her two small children. Exasperated she exclaimed “why is it moms never get to eat until their food is cold?”

Ralphie observes the same fate of his own mother in A Christmas Story. Little Randy is building a pig trough on his plate and his mother desperately tries to convince him to stop playing with his food and just eat it. Time after time Mother tries to sit down and as soon as she attempts a bite of her dinner, she is thwarted with a request from her little piggies. “My mother had not had a hot meal for herself in over 15 years” Ralphie recounts.

The angsty feminist in me observed this of the women around me long ago and I swore that I would never allow such a patriarchal, systemic injustice befall me. I would watch women at holidays and church dinners stand around in the kitchen refusing to eat while offering seconds to everyone else and think to myself “this paradigm will end with my generation! I will never allow my daughters to see woman that way!” Karma laughed and laughed and laughed…and gave me 3 little girls to teach me good!

I now understand why Mama Bear’s porridge was cold. I leave the judging to my cat now.

Ethnographer and author Simon Sinek offers us a different perspective in his book Leaders Eat Last. Sinek interviews a Marine Corp General and asks him “what makes the marines so great?’ He responds “officers eat last” (I verified this with a military friend and he confirmed it is true). He goes on to explain that good leaders often don’t see themselves as leaders at all. Rather they see themselves as servants at the service of some greater cause. Leadership is looking to the person to the left and the right and putting them first, often at the expense of your own best interests.

So maybe us moms are actually bad ass marines, oorah! Or maybe love conquers all and we are just experts at self-sacrifice and putting others first? Or maybe we’re pushovers and we will do anything to end the pterodactyl-like screech of an angry toddler. For me it could be any or all of these scenarios depending on the day. What I do know for certain is Momma’s gotta eat! So, here are my top 3 secrets for making sure I get a few bites in while still looking like I’m a dazzling hostess with the mostess.

#1 Get out of my kitchen! Eat while you cook. A bite here and there to “taste check” (ie. stave off starvation) will make it much less maddening when little Susie spills her milk just as you finally get a chance to sit down. This way you at least get a few bites while it’s warm. Bonus tip: You get to pick and choose the areas of the casserole dish where the cheese is most perfectly burnt around the edges. Yum!

#2 The cheese stands alone. I spoil myself and about every two weeks I go buy myself a big ol’ hunk of cheese that’s too expensive for the rest of the family and hide it in the back of the fridge. I would share….really I would, but no one in my family would appreciate it the way it should be truly savored (Mmmmm Humboldt Fog). Don’t make the mistake of cutting it up into cute little cubes on a salad plate either (the dog will inevitably steal it when you’re not looking). I like to take a long inhale of the majestic aroma, and take a bite right off the block before shoving it back behind the mayo jar. The satisfaction grips me deep down in my soul and gives me the endurance to muscle through the rest of meal prep.

#3 Wheaties- The Breakfast of Champions No I’m not suggesting you eat Wheaties for breakfast. What I’m suggesting is that if you have a treasured food item that always disappears within 4 hours of bringing it home from the grocery store, you store it inside the box of Wheaties. I learned very quickly that my kids have “Double Stuf Oreo Radar,” so I can’t hide them just anywhere, they will sniff them out. I have to hide them inside something undesirable that they would never want to touch.

That’s all I’ve come up with so far. The irony is that as I gaze longingly at my children’s warm plate of food, they are usually refusing to eat it or spilling it on the floor. Ah, the cruel ironies of motherhood.

“Alexa, feed my family.”