I Am Mom

"Mom, please call me at the station."

The first time I got an email from Da Kid saying that I knew something was wrong. Bad wrong.

I've since learned Da Kid's cell phone doesn't work at his regular station. A dead spot or something. He can't call here on the station's telephone phone ‘cause it's a long distance charge, so when he needs to speak to me he sends an email for me to call him.

He doesn't do it often and while it may be important, it's not critically so. Mom punches the number accurately, now, because she's not shaking.

On the way in this morning Da Kid had spotted a sign almost across the street, stopped and bought 12 ears of just-picked Silver Queen Corn. Once he got into the station he remembered he wouldn't be home until Wednesday, and didn't know if it would still be any good.

This wouldn't qualify to some as even important, I know, but to him it was. He may be a 6'4" firefighter who first lifted me off the floor when he was twelve, and he now walks into burning buildings and gloms through car wrecks . . . but I'm still his mother. I'm Mom.

It would be fine, I assured him, and reminded him that Sis (Herself's older sister) has been looking for some. If the corn looked good, I suggested, when he headed home on Wednesday he might think about picking up some for her.

Da Kid has helped me shuck corn for years, but it turns out he never paid attention to whether it was any good. He just helped me pull off the husks and then went on his way. So, he didn't know if what he'd bought was or wasn't. He hadn't even pulled a husk back to look.

When he did while we were talking it was apparent he didn't know how to describe what he was looking at. And he didn't have any more money with him because before he left this morning he forgot to put any in his wallet. And . . .

I packed up and headed to the station where he said he'd fix me lunch (a Boston Market frozen meal) and if the corn looked good, we'd get more and spend the afternoon together shucking corn and getting it ready for the freezer.

More turned out to be around a bushel. There were a couple of "turkeys" — including the ear Da Kid was trying to describe to me over the telephone — but the rest was spectacular.

Some of it's now in the station's freezer, with instructions I'd written on a piece of paper before I left the house on how to microwave rather than boil it (It's so much better that way.) tacked to their refrigerator door.

I dropped half of the remaining, filled freezer bags off at Herself's family's house on the way home, the rest is in mine.

A box of gallon-sized freezer bags . . . $3

A bushel of Silver Queen Corn . . . $12

An afternoon spent with your son as he realizes how much work it is to get a bushel of corn on the cob ready for the freezer and that you've been doing it for years and now understands why you do it and why that way and how much faster it goes when two people are doing it together but now knows how to do it himself and did most of the work himself as you told him what to do and as you're leaving he gives you a hug and says, "Thanks Mom." . . . Priceless