Today I taught my parents… (Part 4)

Last time on “Today I Taught My Parents,” we saw Linda teach her mom how to use a webcam.

This week on “Today I Taught My Parents,” Linda shows her parents that she can carry a jar safely.

After months of nothing more than emails, phone calls, and random Facebook messages (my parents still have a flip phone, so you won’t see a post with me teaching them how to text anytime soon), I finally got to SEE my parents—live and in person!— about a week ago. We defied the Supreme Highness Governor Wolf’s orders when my parents invited me to pick up some takeout and join them for lunch.

They’d wanted to come to my house since the restaurant is closer to me (“It takes twenty minutes to get to our house—the food will be cold!”), but I reminded them that my husband works with hundreds of other snot-nosed math brains at the nuclear power plant, making our house a sort of ground-zero for germs. (Well, perhaps I exaggerate, but you get the point. My parents did too. We wisely opted for their house.)

Of course, when I picked up the takeout order, the food was already waiting for me packed up in a bag. That added five minutes to the ticking clock of food-warmth. Then the cashier rang up the wrong order and had to wait for a manager to zero it out on the cash register so she could start all over and ring it up again. That added another ten minutes. I’d be lucky if this food was even lukewarm by the time I got it out of the restaurant to my car.

I took the shortcut to my parents’ house, up the long and winding Wildwood Road. One lane in each direction. No passing zone. Guess who was in front of me? Some woman driving about ten miles an hour with her blinker on the whole time. After four or five miles of this, I was convinced she was headed to my parents’ house too. But she wasn’t gonna get any of our food, no matter HOW cold it got!

After finally arriving and pretending to hug each other—and reheating my parents’ cold French fries in the microwave (“I told you the food would be cold!”)—we settled in for a yummy and fun lunch and gab-fest that lasted three hours.

As I was getting ready to leave, my mom foisted upon me a quart-sized mason jar of homemade spaghetti sauce concocted by my daughter. They loved her sauce (and so do I!), but it was a tad spicy for their delicate, retired, old-person insides. So they wanted to donate their remaining jar to me. I was glad to take it off their hands. (What else would a devoted daughter do, right?)

But then I caught my mother wrapping the jar in about twelve plastic Walmart bags and stuffing it into an Amazon box.

Here’s a picture of the jar, with salt-and-pepper shakers for scale:

[SPOILER ALERT: This picture was taken after I got home.]

“Mom, what’s with the package?”

“It’s the sauce. So it doesn’t break.”

“Mom, I live a few miles away. I think it’ll make it. Besides, with the pandemic, I have my own collection of Amazon boxes in every size.”

“Well, just to be on the safe side…”

“And, with the pandemic, I can’t use my reusable grocery bags, so I have my own collection of plastic Walmart bags too.”

“Well, just to be on the safe side…”

“I’m pretty sure I can carry one quart-sized jar to the car and then into my house without breaking anything.”

“Just. To. Be. On. The…”

“…Safe side. Yes, I know. Please unwrap it.”

She blinked at me. Twice. It was now officially a standoff.

“Mom, I just turned fifty-nine. I realize I’m not QUITE a grown-up yet, but give me the benefit of the doubt here.”

She stared at me and didn’t move. So, I walked to the counter, took the overwrapped jar out of the Amazon box, and started peeling off the layers of plastic Walmart bags like I was peeling an onion. And just when it started to feel hopeless, I saw glass and, through the glass, spaghetti sauce. Eureka!

I physically hugged each of my parents (like the rebel I am) and headed out to my car.

Score: Linda, 1; Mom, ZILCH. I had won.

Or had I?

While standing my ground against my mom, my dad had been outside putting several empty mason jars into my car to give back to my daughter. I didn’t think much of this gesture until I got home and took out the bag of empty jars.

Each one was wrapped in a half dozen plastic Walmart bags and had several more stuffed down inside them.

Just to be on the safe side.