My Mother ate Pigeon Pie, inequility in the home

        When I interviewed my mom about food and her life, she spoke at great length about growing up in the depression and living on a farm. She also related a great deal about her mother’s life and how poverty caused her mother‘s family to starve. Furthermore my mother’s socialized belief was that men control the financial assets , the social obligations, and held  the ability to tell my mother no or yes, father even controlled how often she could  purchase food. This  left the only location she could control she was ever given and that was how the food was prepared, It forced her to focus her image of herself on her ability to cook the kitchen.  When she spoke she spoke about the foods she prepared for others, about the children she cared for and how they still call her for her recipes. What made my mother a good mother in her eyes, in my father’s eyes, was that she knew how to cook and clean.  Food defined her , it gave her strength, pride and success in a world where she was offered little otherwise.  

       Feminist speak of the Women’s Kitchen and the safety and comfort in it. They also tell of how foods are central to women;  first in the fact that the ideological connection to food, defines women’s self image. We use food to control our weight, we use food to comfort us and we also use food to show how we care for them. An example of this is how many women will prepare a meal that is good for their children’s health. They will prepare foods that others prefer as opposed to what they would like to eat.  In telling my mother ‘s life history via food, I am telling a story of a women who lived through the time she owned no land and no assets, did not drive nor plan events, she lived for others, and defined herself by what others wanted and her ability to provide that need.  

To begin the interview my mother and I began by discussion what the doctor had ordered for a diet, he told her she had to cut out all salt for her husband and herself. I realized that the story she was telling was causing her extreme anxiety. Father was upset about it and so was she.  Her statement was “For Lords Sake.”  (My mother always says that) “I am 80 years old and father is 84, what in the world does it matter if we enjoy a little salt on our food, so what our feet puff up and I have to put them up.” Mom felt she was losing control over her ability to make decisions and how she defined herself. If she did not use salt the food would not be good, she knew that, she believed that, and by taking it away the doctor had told her the food she had always prepared was unhealthy and if the food was unhealthy then because she defined herself as a good mother by what she prepared she understood it to mean that she had not been  a good mother, a good wife.  She had feed her family the wrong foods and it had caused illness.

Poverty was a large part of our conversation. Mom told of her mother who almost starved to death during the early years of the depression, and until she had met my grandfather she did not realize that others even ate three meals a day. At that point mom began to speak about her childhood. She told of how grandma would make pigeon pie. She told me how it was made and that it was extremely good. Moms ask if I would like the recipe so we could try it. She did not realize that her family was poor; she said the reason she did not realize it is because they always had food to it. Back in those days most of the foods were provided by the farm and the families grew and processed almost everything they ate. They wasted nothing. She stated “Sis we ate everything but the squeal when we killed a pig to eat.”  I related this to how we also had lived in poverty and I said “Mom, I remember going down to the swamp and catching frogs, we would bring them to you and you would fry up the frog legs, it was like eating penny candy for us it was a real treat.”  When I said this mom related how she always enjoyed cooking because her family was so appreciative of the foods she prepared. I,  like my mother had not realized the depth and strength of what food meant in our lives. Even as I knew that food had been the center of our family life. I never realized that it was completely how my mother defined herself as good or bad. The kitchen and mom’s food kept the family together, because it was the one place where we all came and talked, shared our feelings, cried and laughed. My mother had made a place in our home, where dad’s wrath did not come and where she controlled and kept track of her family. It is how she kept us healthy, It is how she took care of others, It is even how she was recognized in the community as a “Good Women”. People would call when ever there was a church social, bazaar, wedding, funeral or any event that required food, and they depended on my mother to make all the breads that would be used. 

Dad said “I never messed with ma’s kitchen she would have kilt me.” We laughed that day yet the statement tells of how the kitchen really was the only place my mother felt she belonged. . I began to understand that it was the only place father allowed her and had she not had her kitchen, she would not have been defined at all.