Our Mommyhood

By Katie, Guest Writer, Katie’s Dailies (@RNRGRL)

Chocolate milk.

Is there anything quite as good? It’s thick, refreshing and well, it’s chocolate!

I drink it nearly every day. I drink it with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I drink it after my runs, I even passed on my love of it to our son. It was the third word he learned to say. I was carrying him downstairs after his afternoon nap when he was a year and a half, when he turned his fuzzy, sleep wrinkled little face to mine and said the magic words, “Shockla? Shockla?” He has had it every day since.

It can’t get get any better than that.

Chocolate milk has always played an important part of my life. I was the youngest growing up in our house, and to help me get over “missing” my two older siblings while they were at school all day, (HA!) my mother would pack a picnic lunch of bologna sandwiches, apples cut into neat little wedges, and home made cookies. And she’d make chocolate milk.

But this chocolate milk was oh, so good! because we got to drink it from an old mayonnaise jar that my mother had rinsed out and saved after she had finished with it. We even dubbed it “Our Chocolate Milk Jar”.

Not real original, I know, but to a pre-schooler who had to share everything and had hand-me-downs, this jar was something pretty special because only my mom and I got to use it. And we thought the name was perfect.

We’d load everything up into Mom’s bike basket that she had on the front of her old purple Schwinn, I’d climb onto the wide fender that her bike sported, and away we’d go to the park down the street from our house. This was back in 1969, 1970, back before there were such things as bike helmets and bike carriers.

It was life on the edge, man, life on the edge.

Mom would holler from the front, “Keep your legs out, Katie! Stick out your legs!!” My blonde hair would be streaming out behind me, legs stuck out, Mom pedaling fast downhill, giving us tummy tickles and making us both laugh out loud. The sun would be warming our backs, I’d hug my mom’s waist tight, nuzzling up against her back, breathing in sync with her.

I never wanted the bike ride to end.

We’d get to our little neighborhood park, where we’d spread out the food we’d brought with us on a picnic table. While munching our sandwiches, we’d chit chat away about what made the “criss crosses” in the sky, why birds sing, if Mom swung me high enough would I be able to touch the big blue sky?

All very important things to a young child.

And after we ate all our food, came the best part.

The drinking of the chocolate milk from Our Chocolate Milk Jar.

It was truly nectar from the gods above in my mind. The fact that I was drinking something out of a jar always made me feel unique (maybe that explains my quirky outlook on life) and I thought this was how Laura and Mary felt when they were moving out West (at the time, Mom was reading to me “The Little House on the Prairie” and I related everything to the pioneer days. Another explanation to my take on life, perhaps?).

After we finished eating, we’d play on the teeter totters, the merry-go-round and take turns sliding down the slide. We always finished up on the swings, Mom pushing me higher and higher till my feet almoooost touched the sky. Then she’d tell me that it was time to go home, gradually slowing down my swing till it was finally still. We’d climb back on her bike and begin the trek back home, a little bit slower, a little bit more subdued.

After we reached home and unloaded her bike basket, setting Our Chocolate Milk Jar in the kitchen sink with soapy water in it to soak, it was time for my afternoon nap. Mom and I would stretch out on her bed, reading and reading, till Mom deemed that it was finally time for me to go to sleep. As she’d tuck me into my bed, she’d lean down till we were both eye-to-eye with each other, and she’d whisper, “Night night, my Big Blue Eyed Girl” and creep out of my room. I’d lay there awhile till finally the first half of the day would catch up with me and I’d fall asleep.

Every morning as I make my son’s chocolate milk, this memory drifts into my mind, and I smile.

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