Conversation Starter for this Mothers' Day Weekend.

Awwww, isn't that a pretty picture?  

I'm going to let you absorb that picture for a bit longer before I break everyone's brains with what blew up in my head during my morning walk today.

Are we all good?  Everyone's enjoyed the pretty flowers and the reminder that Mother's Day is this weekend?  

Okay, let's begin.

This whole blog is because I saw this flower.  

I remembered, as I walked past it, that someone on face book called it a "grape hyacinth."

That made me think of grapes. Which made me think about a conversation I had with Skippy recently where he told me he liked grapes, but not grape flavored foods.

Which reminded me how I craved all things "purple grape flavored" when I was pregnant with him.  THAT got me thinking about my other pregnancy craving with him:  Wedding cake.

Skippy is NOT a cake fan. He likes cheesecake.  But he's not really a cake kid.  When he was little, we did ice cream cakes for his birthdays.

As a side note, pregnancy cravings seem weird to many people, but I'm pretty sure pregnancy cravings is what gave us dishes like fried eggs on cheeseburgers and avocado toast.

Anyway...

On the flip side of the pregnancy coin, while carrying Skippy, I could not, COULD NOT, abide the thought of chicken, any kind of chicken.  We lived a block from Golden Chicken (one of my favorite fried chicken places of all time) and the smell from that place about killed me. If there was frozen chicken in our freezer, I made Hubby get ride of it.

Skippy's favorite meat for me to cook? Chicken.

Hmmmmm, thought I...is this science?

Then I thought about Peaches.  Her pregnancy was a little less dramatic, mostly because it was my second and I didn't have the time (because I was working, babysitting, and watching Skippy) to really luxuriate in all the many joys pregnancy has to offer. (Read here:  I had to show up to work whether I was barfing on my shoes or not and the parents of the kid I babysat didn't care if I was perpetually nauseous.)  I had one craving with Peaches, for a very, very specific chocolate candy bar.  (Charleston Chew, if you must know.)

Peaches, until she was maybe 12, hated chocolate.  Hated it.  Even now, it's not tops on her list of flavors.

The other thing about my pregnancy with Peaches was that I HATED the smell of meat.  HATED it.  I remember lying on the couch on Memorial Day weekend, begging for death because everyone in out neighborhood was sacrificing multiple pounds of dead animal flesh on the altar of the grill all weekend.

Now, yes, Peaches has dabbled in the fine art of vegetarianism, when she was a young teen.  BUT, what pulled her out of it a decade ago, was the sweet, beautiful juiciness of a double bacon burger.

So here's a conversation starter for everyone who's having a socially distanced Mothers' Day celebration this weekend:  If you're the mom, ponder your pregnancy cravings and then check in with your adult kids...do they hate what you craved?  What couldn't you eat?  Is that their favorite food?

If you're the kid, ask your mom...I promise you she remembers. That whole thing about forgetting the pain of labor and delivery?  That might be true, but the memory of pregnancy is forever.  Do you love the foods that made her vomit? Did she crave something you now find disgusting?

So there, I've taken care of that sense of discomfort some of you probably feel trying to talk to your adult child/aging parent.  Now when you're skyping your mom and the only part of her face you can see are her eyebrows because she hasn't figured out how to get her whole face in the screen, or when you're face timing your kids and you're mortified because your phone screen is not at all flattering when it comes to your wrinkles and extra chins, you have something to talk about!

You're WELCOME!

For all you moms, grand moms, moms to be, aunties who are second moms, I salute you. It's a magical, messy, noisy, dirty, hilarious little club we belong to.  Happy Mothers' Day to us all!