I think about it sometimes. I read in the book Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman that one of the things a daughter misses out on when a mother dies while she is yet young is a lot of little things that are transferred in person.
In this case, it is a smidgen of milk added to an egg to help the white break up as it is stirred for a scrambled egg. My youngest son wants to eat one almost every day at the moment and I don’t cook it the same way my mom did, we use a microwave. And it is a bit complex to get it just right – several little cookings and stirrings until it is no longer wet.
My mom made certain we knew how to do all kinds of wifely things because I grew up in a era when the differences between little boys and little girls were clearly drawn, though feminism was beginning to soften the lines. Though we were a family of all girls and there were no boys, causing me to become somewhat of a tomboy growing up close to my dad.
Mothers could, and probably should, teach their sons some of the things that my mom taught us. There is no guarantee there will be a compliant servant wife to do them for my sons. At the same time, childhood is so brief. I understand that so clearly now. My mom’s mother didn’t teach her much in the way of wifely things. She said she was quite ignorant about how to do even the simplest thing at first but she muddled through and became quite proficient.
The world is changing so quickly. Who knows what life will be like when my sons become independent ? Somehow, I just believe, they will figure out what they need to figure out for themselves. We all do.
Missing Mom 