Tupperware

Speaking of spending most of my time in the kitchen nowadays, I had the bright idea of using the container with a red lid for food that could be had by my roommate and I told him so.  I came up with this plan after an incident wherein I had left the food in the container outside so that it cools before I put it in the fridge and had gone to sleep.  In the morning it became obvious to me that roommate thought it was for him to take to work and he had done so.  He returned the container still half full because there was a lot of Imam Byeldi (trans. The Imam Fainted, that's how good that dish is) in it (enough for four people) and apologized for not asking before taking it.

So this new plan worked the next time I had food to share.  In the evening roommate came in and my attention focused immediately on whether he had brought back the containers.  He had not.  As if on cue, maybe he had heard my thoughts, he explained that he had forgotten the food in his lunch box and will have it the following day.

That's when it hit me.  I had turned into my mother.  For Armenian moms, the plastic container is more valuable than the food she cooks and sometimes gives away.  She wants the containers back.  Understandably.  But I am not even a mom.  How did I become mom without being one?   This thought amuses me because as I was growing up I was so not like her and thought that I had missed my calling in life.  It has nothing to do with having or not having children.  At the first opportunity, mother, thru daughter, will reveal herself.  Who knows how many other instances of being my mother I have lived thru, unaware.
I have discovered some but I am sure there is more.

In my first monologue, I had a whole routine about the subject of food containers and Armenian women's obsession about them.  As I play my mom in the kitchen, she is looking at the three shelves holding all her plastic containers and exclaiming "where have my Tupperwares gone?" Every woman in the audience would start laughing recognizing themselves. 

All this is happening as I am rediscovering my mom from a distance.  Mother and I used to live together for over ten years before I moved out here to Arizona which has given me a chance to realize what I really admire about her.

Tupperwares excluded of course.