The week's gone by much faster than expected, and it caught up with me this morning when it occurred to me that I forgot to pull the roast out of the freezer yesterday so that I could cook it today. Now I will have to improvise the dinner meal. . . .
This sort of thing never happened to my grandmother. She woke when the rooster crowed in the morning. I'm serious, although I don't know if it was her chickens that woke her. I do think that when I was older that it was the neighbor's chickens that woke me when we'd visit.
But she just got up and got going and got breakfast started. And most of the time a pot of beans for lunch (and dinner) was already on the stove while she was making breakfast. I don't know how she did that day in and day out. Albeit, probably less so when I was older and her children were all out of the house.
Even so, I've got five less children than she did and I can't remember to pull the roast from the freezer for one meal, let alone get up early enough to have breakfast ready for the hubby and children before they're off to work and school. Let alone have something started for lunch by the time the clean up for breakfast is all done.
Oh and she cooked all three meals, too, every day. I've said it before and I'll say it again . . . I am better fitted for life now than for life then. Truthfully, she didn't know another way; no one did because there wasn't another way.
Maybe it was simpler then, easier, in a way. I mean it was a long way from the dirt floors she used to sweep as a child. Still I sometimes wonder what she'd think of my life and how much things have changed. For example, how the carne picada I made this week wasn't the full cut of meat minced with a machete like she used to make or how I managed to forget to defrost the meat I'd planned to feed my family this evening. And how I most definitely do not wake up at the crack of dawn and just get started like she used to.
She wasn't all work; I remember going to her house for lunch and Days of Our Lives was on the TV at the noon hour or how she'd sit and watch Dallas on Friday nights. She'd visit over the fence line with her neighbor and get the neighborhood gossip or how she'd always have "napoleon" ice cream in her deep freezer by the window, which I was sure was just for me.
I know it's not always that simple, the differences between her world and mine, and that she had good days and bad days like I do. . . . And mostly, I think, I'm just thankful that there's not a rooster around to kick-start my days.
¡Hasta la proxíma vez!
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