Meatloaf Memories

The idea for this blog came to me on Monday night. I took Monday and Tuesday off from work, just because I could, and I was making dinner for my dad. I know that it has been amazingly hard for him because he is having to learn to do the things for himself that my mom used to do for him. So it seemed like a good idea to make him something that my mom used to make--he hasn't had these things for almost a year... I asked him what he'd like and he wasn't sure, but when I suggested meatloaf, he immediately responded with a "that sounds good," so I went with it and made meatloaf and fried rice. I was flipping through the recipe box trying to find the recipe for the fried rice and saw so many recipes that I'd never even heard of, ones that were not from our collection of favorites, but still in my mom's hurried handwriting, faded and bent. I thought that someday I would have to try each of them, if only once. Then the idea came to me that if I tried them, I would also have to write about them. Of course--because that's what I do.

The meatloaf was a recipe I was familiar with--I'd made it plenty of times before, the first time when I was eleven. The fried rice, on the other hand, was a new recipe for me. The recipe calls it "Chinese Style Fried Rice," but we just grew up with it being called "egg rice." If we were having meatloaf for dinner, it naturally followed that we expected to also have egg rice. When we had meatloaf without egg rice, it was always just a little bit of a disappointment because the egg rice was one of our favorites. For this reason, I had expected it to be complicated and time consuming, but in reality, it was much easier than I expected-- it just creates a lot of dishes. It is a simple recipe that consists of Minute rice, butter, egg, onion and soy sauce. Simple but tasty.

As I said before, I have made the meatloaf many times before, but I particularly remember the first time when I was eleven. I was in sixth grade, and this was probably the first real cooking I'd ever done. It was the first time that my mom really welcomed me into her kitchen rather than shooing me out, aside from the holiday sugar cookie decorating. It was also my first experience with how it feels when somebody tells you that they enjoyed something that you made for them.

This day that I first learned to appreciate cooking, was a school day, and the bell signaling the end of the day had been eagerly anticipated since the moment I'd arrived. These were the years when going to school was something akin to torture-not so much because of the school part, but more because sixth graders can be jerks. When our class was dismissed, I ran to meet my brother outside of his classroom so that we could head to the parking lot and wait for our mom to come and take us home. She had just started working for the first time in our lives at the beginning of that school year and usually arrived just a couple of minutes after school go out, if she wasn't already there when the bell rang.

On this particular day, she was late. I have always been a worrier, and so when my mom had not arrived by 3:15, I was freaking out a little bit. Every possibility flashed through my head - did she forget us? Was she in an accident? Was she working late? Did she get sick and have to go to the hospital? Was there an accident on the freeway blocking traffic? I know it was only fifteen minutes, which to an adult is no big deal, but at 11 and 8, my brother and I were a bit upset. Up to this point, our mother had always been there when she said she would be and it seemed that there had to be a really good reason why she wasn't. Five more minutes passed and I started to panic. This, of course, was before cell phones, so I went to the office to use the phone. I called our house, just in case for some strange reason our mom had forgotten us. I let the phone ring ten times... No answer. We went outside to wait some more.

At about 3:30 pm, the school secretary came outside and told us that our mom was on the way and that we should come inside and wait. She did not offer any other information. I found myself getting angry, feeling like she must be holding back something. There was something that she wasn't telling us that we had a right to know. My brother and I sat down in the plastic chairs just outside the principal's office keeping a chair between us, which naturally did not keep us from arguing.

It was almost 4:00 pm, an hour since school got out, when our mom walked through the door with a temporary cast on her hand. My brother and I both gasped and ran to greet her, stumbling over each other to ask her what happened. She told us that she'd broken her thumb at work, but that everything was going to be okay, so we shouldn't worry about her. At the time, I had no concept for pain, and even still I don't know that I could imagine that pain, but she hid it for us so that we wouldn't worry. She led us to the car and apologized over and over again as she drove us home. Once we finally convinced her that we were okay and that we weren't mad at her, she asked me if I would help her with dinner.

Usually, when she was making dinner, she wanted me to stay as far away from the kitchen as possible, but now here she was asking me for help. I asked her what we were having, and she told me that it was going to be meatloaf. I was excited to help, but I was also nervous. I knew that meatloaf required eggs, and cracking the eggs was something that I not yet managed to do successfully yet. I always ended up with little pieces of shells in them. Then there was the main reason that she needed help with it- the meatloaf required mashing the ingredients together by hand. I was a little bit grossed out by the thought of mixing up the ground beef and egg and breadcrumbs using my hands. I had no problem playing in the mud, but for some reason ground beef and eggs were intimidating. In the end, it turned out to be just as fun as playing in the mud. My mom stood watch as I poured all of the ingredients into the bowl and mashed them together with my hands. While she watched my hands mashing, I watched her face, seeking her approval and finding it in her smile.

I mashed the mixture into loaf pans and after an hour in the oven, we had meatloaf, and I had contributed to the family's meal that night. I was thrilled that I had made the meatloaf and I hadn't messed it up. As we ate, my mom asked my dad how the meatloaf was. When he told her that it was good, she told him that I had made it. I beamed excitedly, happy to know that he still enjoyed it even when I made it. That night, probably without knowing it, my mom gave me a piece of her passion for feeding people.