This is my mom, Olivia. Those of you who read comments on the blogs of my friends Shuna, Sam and Cookiecrumb may know her as "Jen's mom."
I think it all started when I was visiting mom a few months back. It was early in the morning and she was still in her pajamas. I went in to say hi to her and she excitedly told me, "I left a comment on 'I'm Mad and I Eat' and she wrote back!". I had a knot in my stomach as I realized my worlds were colliding, and I looked over her shoulder to read a rather benign comment about the royals coming to the Pt. Reyes farmers' market.
There were several things about this that cracked me up -- I knew that mom looked at blogs every once in a while, but I didn't know how regularly she was reading some blogs. Also her handle - "jen's mom" - as if I am the only "jen" on the planet. I often comment on blogs as "jen," but I only feel I can do that because I include a link to my blog which makes it obvious which of the many (many many) jen's I am.
The next time I saw one of mom's comments on a blog was in the litany of get well wishes that Fred received on Sam's blog when he wasn't well.
Fred! Mystery solved! I just took a peek at what you've been eating! "BRAT diet for you," says an American mom, "Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast"....just kidding. I'm jealous. Be better. Sam, caregivers give better care when fortified with French wine.
Happy ending to you both.
I was innocently reading through the comments and realized that the advice for a BRAT diet sounded familiar. By the time I read the advice to Sam to drink wine I didn't even have to read the handle to know that my mom had struck again.
Around this time, I noticed a real shift with mom. She would insert bloggers' names into regular conversations with me. Whenever we were talking about blogs, she would have a little piece of paper and take notes on new blogs I was telling her about. "Did you see what happened to the Food Whore and that Bridezilla," she would ask in the same breath as "have you called your grandparents?"
"How do you find these blogs?" I asked her one day. "From Food Porn Watch, of course." She admitted that she is hooked on many of them and astonished that so many blogs feature such compelling writing.
The coolest was when I received a note from her the other day. She included a quote -- not from Walt Whitman or from Shakespeare or the Bible ... but from Shuna:
We preserve people by making the dishes they taught us. Dishes they loved, were proud of, gave us permission to start making when their hands stopped working. Sharing food with others is about tradition. About a desire to reach in and pull close. About re-remembering. Closing our eyes and taking us there.
I am really glad that she is a part of this blog world. I love that she reads the same blogs that I do, but brings her own perspective to the posts. I love that she noticed the amazingness in Shuna's blog post about cooking and intentionality, while I read it and loved it but moved on quickly and forgot about it in my backlog of bloglines feeds. So if you ever receive a comment on your blog from the vague handle "jen's mom" just know that it's my mom and she is having so much fun reading your blog.
