Dear Mom,
As a child, I believed with my entire soul that you had an ever expanding list of rules. A list that included bizarre, nonsensical commandments, designed for your own personal amusement and our general chagrin. It is 20 years later and I have my own child and my own household to run. It is through this lens, that I am able to the see wisdom of one very persistent edict of yours. Curiously enough, it is not my child who has brought me around to your side Mother, but my husband. The issue is the opening of foodstuffs. When I was a girl, you strictly forbade the opening of any UNopened packages, particularly cardboard boxes and milk cartons. I believed this to be a simple show of power on your part. It was a way for you to control what we ate and when or perhaps to conserve resources given your distaste for going to the store more than once a month. I now know the truth. It has nothing to do with eating, but more to do with packaging itself. I have found myself flying into a rage over a cereal box, so poorly accessed that the it is no longer fit to contain the remains of the product. Worse, I find these boxes and bags and cartons put back in their place without any effort to remedy the leakage of food. So, it is with some shame that I say to you; "You were right Mom".
*This statement should in no way be construed as an admission that you were right at any other time or that you will be right in the future. This statement is neither retro-active, nor future-active. It is simply an expression of my feeling on this one, very specific and somewhat insignificant issue of food preservation.
Your loving daughter
4 days ago
