Helen Wilson and potato salad

Throughout college, and most of high school, for that matter, if we were having barbecue, my job was to make the potato salad. At first, it was just to dice the potatoes and the boiled eggs, and my mom would chop the onions and add the pickle relish and salad dressing. I advanced to chopping the onions, and before long, I was doing the whole bowl of salad.

It reached the point where I HATED making potato salad. It didn't matter that everyone loved my mom's recipe and always wanted her to bring the potato salad to any gathering. The fact was that I only sort of liked potato salad myself and would have been perfectly happy without it. I hated cutting up the various ingredients--I was slow and it took me forever. "Why me?" I would wail before my mom asked me oh-so-sweetly to just start it, knowing that once I started it, I'd probably finish it.

Either way, when my mom died, I stopped making potato salad. There was no reason to do so. By then, in 1989 when she died, I'd moved to Texas and was rarely home for those cook-out holidays. In Texas, I never made it for my family, even though I'd acquired more of a taste for it, nor did anyone else ask me to make potato salad.

So alas, yesterday, when out of the blue I decided to make potato salad, it had been more than 20 years since the last time I had done so. My mom's recipe was still stored in the recesses of my brain, although I had to dig a bit. So off I went.

And. . . it was good! Even the youngest BoilerBaby liked it. BB3 was particularly taken by it, mostly foregoing the California cole slaw that she loves and in fact had made in favor of the potato salad. I felt like such a rotten mother, having deprived my kids of something that they very much liked.

I enjoyed it too, maybe because it brought back such fond memories of the mother who raised me and the good times that abounded when she was around. I can't really call it "comfort food" because it was not that to me as a child. Maybe for me, the better term is "mom food."

If only they knew . . .

I wish the Congressmen who voted to defund Planned Parenthood knew what I knew. If they did--and they honestly cared about women's health and children--they'd be hard-pressed to vote against Planned Parenthood.

I vividly remember the time I spent there for my social work practicum. I went in a bit uncomfortable with knowledge that the clinic referred women for abortions. I quickly learned that, far from its reputation among those who don't know, Planned Parenthood does not encourage abortions. Rather, for women facing an unwanted pregnancy, abortion was an option, as was continuing the pregnancy and keeping the baby , and as was continuing the pregnancy and putting the baby up for adoption. I was trained to respect the client's choice. If she had no interest in an abortion, then our discussion turned to services to make sure she had a healthy pregnancy and services to help her thereafter, whether with the adoption or raising her child.

While there, I learned how, for many women, Planned Parenthood was their only health care provider. For many, if Planned Parenthood had not been available to do their annual exam, including a Pap test and breast examination, they would not have had those services. I learned that many women looked to Planned Parenthood for choices about contraceptive methods and provision of their Pills, IUDs, diaphragms, and condoms so that they might never need to consider an abortion.

Throughout the time I was there, I was always saddened when a woman chose abortion over adoption or keeping the child. But the decision to undergo an abortion was only very very rarely reached lightly. For even those women who resolutely opted for an abortion from the outset, it was clear that they had reached their decision only after gut-wrenching consideration and discussion with those closest to them. Yes, there were women who cavelierly approached abortion as nothing more than another birth control method, but those women were rare, and deserving of no more distain than woman who cavelierly create broods of children, fathered by different men, which neither they nor the fathers can support.

I spent an awful lot of time educating clients on different contraceptive methods or preparing them for what to expect as they underwent their first pelvic exam. I talked to a lot of high school girls who felt pressured by their boyfriends to have sex, and we discussed healthy relationships and strategies for dealing with peer pressure, things I learned during my training.

I learned that far from being an abortion-mill, Planned Parenthood was an agency that sought to promote women's health and to protect a woman's autonomy.

One woman's story in particular has stayed with me over the years. She'd returned to the clinic for her post-abortion exam, and her first stop was a visit with me. I knew from the outset that she was not okay. As we talked, she explained that her pregnancy was the result of an extramarital affair. She had given birth to one child with congenital birth defects, which prompted her husband to have a vasectomy. Thus, when she became pregnant again, there was little doubt that it was not her husband's child. She explained that she was very torn about having the abortion: one the one hand, she wanted to have a healthy baby, but the reality was that her husband would have left her once he found out about the affair, and she would not have been able to care for her special needs child alone. She reluctantly opted for an abortion. Maybe she should have thought about the consequences--the choice--before she had her affair, but that's beside the point. What was the right choice in this circumstance? Who's to decide? I can only say that it was a decision that only she could make because only she would have to live with the consequences.  Having made the decision to have an abortion, can anyone honestly say that she should have had to entrust her health to some illegal provider of abortions?  I think the answer is self-evident.

I have no doubt in my mind that abortion is always a tragedy; it is evidence of a failure somewhere along the way, but the answer is not to defund an agency simply because it provides a service.
 

Mean Girls, Part Deaux

Being middle-class means that I live in a nice, relatively safe suburban neighborhood, with good, relatively safe public schools. That's good. The downside is that there are too many middle-class moms with time on their hands. As the saying goes, idle hands are the devil's workshop. Their main concern is ensuring that their children are popular with both the other kids and the teachers, even if it means that their mean girl personas, which should have long ago disappeared as they grew in maturity, are too often allowed to come out and play. To-wit: I received an email from the room moms for the youngest BB's first grade class. They're preparing for the end of the year (good). They're planning to purchase a very nice gift for the teacher (wonderful). They've asked for donations for this gift (no problem). So far, so good, until I reached the end of the email where there's the description of the card to be signed from the kids who contributed to the gift! That's right. Children who can't or don't contribute, don't get to sign the card. We wouldn't want Mrs. K. to miss crediting the kids who gave her the gift.

I have to be clear here: I appreciate what the room moms do. Even though their motives may not be entirely pure, their volunteer work in the class room is surely a help when kids need individual attention. Plus, somebody has to organize the different parties during the year, and I appreciate that they're willing to do so.

In addition, in my middle-class neighborhood, there aren't that many kids whose parents can't afford to contibute, but there are some whose families are economically challenged. It is those kids who I feel for, maybe because I would have been one of those kids. But of course, I wuld have never been put in that position. My mom, was often the room mom. And she never did anything that would have the effect of excluding any child. Indeed, she often came up with creative, but inexpensive, ideas in her role as room mom. I don't recall if we ever gave the teacher a gift, but if we did, it was not expensive and did not require all kids to contribute money. What I do recall is that every year, the teachers were genuinely effusive in their praise of what a great room mom she was.

I should also note that it's not that I think that private school parents are somehow better. Rather, in my experience, they tend to be a little more secure in their social position and don't feel as much of a need to remind the teachers of it.

So, it's rather an understatement to say that I'm a little miffed about the email I received. Yep, let's teach our kids the value of money, and while we're at it, let's give them an early lesson on exclusiveness. In fact, better yet, maybe the children's signatures should reflect the size of their contribution: those who give the most, can sign first and in the biggest print so that Mrs. K will know who really to favor and perhaps even pass that info on to next year's teachers. First grade is not too early to learn this important lesson.

Waco: Komen and Cotton Palace

Today, in the space of about 30 seconds, I went from pride in my hometown to chagrin. This morning, as I lie in bed, willing myself to roll out, I saw the promo for the Race for the Cure, in which one of my colleagues appears. We quickly "rewound" the ad to see her again. I felt all warm and fuzzy, remembering all the years we've participated. It's a big to-do in Waco, and we've participated every year, either walking the 1 mile or running the 5K. Rain or shine, with little kids or without, we were there, enjoying the carnival atmosphere, collecting the freebies, honoring breast cancer survivors, and supporting a good cause.

As I basked in the glow of warm memories, the commercial for Waco Cotton Palace ran--that annual "celebration" where we relive the charm and pageantry of the antebellum South. I've never succeeded in explaining Cotton Palace to one who hasn't experienced it, probably because I'm biased and bothered about the whole thing. It's so wrong in so many ways, let me count those ways. The King of Cotton, an old and accomplished businessman, and the Queen, a young, fresh-faced high school senior. That's bad enough, but consider how one becomes Queen. She isn't chosen because of her academic accomplishments, her good deeds, or even her beauty. Rather, she must be a member of one of the old, very wealthy Waco families. That's it. She's won the birth lottery. At least I think that's how it works. It's steeped in great mystery, and not accessible to a mere commoner like me. Then there are the princesses (Waco girls) and the duchesses (outsiders). They too are not necessarily accomplished--trust me, I know. Connections, however, matter.

The truth is, the royal motif is annoying, but most colleges and high schools select a Homecoming King and Queen, and I don't lose a wink of sleep about it. Rather, it's the fact that Cotton Palace is exclusive in particularly repugnant ways. Blacks and Latinos (and probably Jews) need not apply.

But wait, there's more. The pageant and the show, a reliving of the history, the happy history, when cotton was king, some people attended lovely balls and sipped mint juleps, while others literally slaved away, denied the fruits of their labor. Slavery is a historical fact, but not one I believe worthy of a celebration.

I'm an outsider, so maybe that's why I don't get it. But it's not worth it to me to try to understand. Every year, other outsiders will attend Cotton Palace for the first time and some will be offended. I've done my best to warn them.