Thanks for trying to kill me, Mom

Even though it hasn’t been well-received since, hm, college graduation, if ever, my mother still insists on loading me up with the questionably aged contents of the back of her freezer whenever I see her. While I greatly appreciated her braving the drive into the city yesterday, Cubs game be damned, I just couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm for the suspicious loaf she shoved my way as soon as I greeted her outside of my apartment. Oh, of course I’ll take this upstairs right away, before I even help you find parking. Would not want to forget this… banana bread? Oh, don’t be concerned if it seems “wet” when I unwrap the cellophane? “Because it was frozen”? Okay, thanks mom. Yummy.

Do I sound like an ungrateful brat? Probably… I put this woman through childbirth and 12-year-old cleavage, nine months of pregnancy and the threat of parties every time she went out of town, or to the grocery store. Perhaps it’s just part of my payback to take these frozen mysteries off of her hands, so she doesn’t have to feel guilty about throwing food away. It’s the least I can do, right?

Or maybe my suspicion is unwarranted. Maybe my lovely mother baked this banana bread especially for me, and put it in the freezer because I’m a horrible daughter and she had no clue when she’d see me next. So this morning I cut a piece of this latest gift for breakfast, but I couldn’t help bending down to inspect before consuming. And it’s a good thing I did because the loaf in question was chock full of walnuts, i.e. POISON.

Perhaps my mother forgot about the walnut salad that sent me to the emergency room last summer. And the mole sauce that swelled up half my face on a date last fall. Perhaps those conversations slipped her mind… But you’d think her memory would have been jogged when, an hour after sending me upstairs with the lethal loaf, I asked the waitress if the pesto that came on the chicken sandwich I ordered for lunch was made with walnuts. Or when the waitress came back from the kitchen and told me the pesto was safe but the sandwich came with a “walnut slaw” so she would make sure to order it without… you’d think that would have triggered some kind of alarm… or when I launched into a rant after the waitress left about how I can’t believe so many restaurants sneak this extremely common allergen into food and don’t warn you on the menu.

But no, I received no warning. So this confirms my suspicion that my mother doesn’t even know what contents lurk under the protective ice she insists on feeding me. Either that, or she’s trying to kill me.