#40D4W – Day 2: This is how I roll

January 2, 2016

I think this falls under Labor. I went to the grocery store for my Mother-In-Law. It was a sacrifice for my Marriage because I like to please Mom, but very rarely do it. I always feel like I set myself up for failure if I volunteer to do something, especially on Mom’s home turf, which is where we are in San Antonio right now.

The whole family – and when I say that, I mean 25 people from a year old to 68 years old – including children, spouses and grandchildren from Mom & Dad’s four offspring came for dinner. Here in the south that means the mid-day meal. Afterwards is the annual chaos of families and cousins and siblings and godparents exchanging gifts. It’s pretty cool, when it all comes together.

But sometimes it doesn’t come together perfectly, or even close. But that’s what makes it cool – it’s family, so who gives a rip if it’s perfect. We all know each others’ warts already. I’ve learned, particularly in the last year, that we all have idiot Brothers-in-Law, and I’m at least one person’s token idiot. They’re mine, too… But we love each other, check our egos at the door, and don’t talk politics or religion. This year we spent most of the time talking about The Force Awakens.

Anyhoo – my sacrifice: I went to the store to get “Dinner Rolls.” Innocuous, right? Riiiiigghhhtt.

I asked Mama what sort of dinner rolls I was looking for, as Mom had indicated they were fresh in the bakery. Me, if we had rolls when I was growing up, would have looked for those brown-and-serve ones.

I’m not sure those have ever seen the inside of Mom’s house.

So Mama tells me, “In a cellophane bag where the fresh bread is.”

Okay. I can do this. Mom gives me a list with the rolls, batteries, half-and-half, avocados and tortilla chips. She showed me a carton of the half-and-half in her fridge, and I was good with the rest. So off I go…

The entrance I go in opens right into the bakery. This was not an accident – I know this grocery store well enough to know where to park! So I go up to the fresh bread area, a set of five or six shelved kiosks varying in size, seeing all sorts of rolls, breads, muffins, biscuits – you name it. Wow! And I knew I would find what I was looking for. Heck, I even had a picture in my head from what they looked like at my own store back home.

So I circle. Then I criss-cross. Then I zig-zag, and circle again.

Nothing says “Dinner Rolls” on the store labels. There are a lot of things I cannot identify or even remember – but I knew for certain there were no “Dinner Rolls.”

There were no bakers around, either.

I did see a suspicious box wrapped in plastic wrap with steam on the inside, holding some twelve baked items that looked a LOT like dinner rolls – but they looked like the brown-and-serve variety, only much bigger and obviously fresh. And NOT in a cellophane bag!

I trawled the bakery some more, taking note that I had wandered into the produce department so I stopped and picked up the avocados. Then I got back to the bakery and, seeing no bakers around, I did the dreaded but prepared for Plan B.

The last thing I had said before leaving the house was, “Make sure you have your phone with you. Just in case.”

So I texted Mama:

While I waited for the answer, I found a baker:

Mom liked the idea. So I ran with it and got the “Brioche Rolls.” Two dozen.

I have no idea what “Brioche Rolls” are. They look like dinner rolls to me, as you can see in the image at the top of this page…

My sacrifice was summed up in the words, “Mom says to ask someone.”

This is where I failed to meet Mom’s expectations, and claim this as a Sacrifice of Labor for my Marriage. I’m 46 years old. I know to ask someone and had looked for someone before texting.

Sigh – I know Mom loves me as one of her own children. I knew when I volunteered to go to the store that I would let her down. Somehow.

So it’s not that I take it personally, but I really want to, some day, know that Mom knows I did all an adult could do and I’m looking for a Plan B – not a continuation of Plan A as if I hadn’t thought of a pretty standard thing to do. See, this is exacerbated because several of us (Mom’s kids) have teenagers, and those teenagers are literally having their brains physiologically rewired right now – so saying something like “Ask someone” to them is pretty standard fare.

I went through that already. Thirty years ago.

So, some of this is tongue-in-cheek (What is it with this article having so many hyphenated words?) but there is always a kernel of truth in humor. And that kernel here is that I don’t like to let Mom down. She’s been so good to me and I try so hard to please her that I know I am setting my bar so high that I am doomed to fail. She really doesn’t have anything to do with this post.

I just want to be as perfect for her as she is for me.

So I sacrificed my Labor, and probably my ego, to run the gauntlet at the local store just to get blind-sided (there’s another one!) by a baker who says there are no dinner rolls because the oven is broken.

Which made us wonder – what EXACTLY is a Brioche Roll. And how come THEY were fresh-baked? (<=- Last hyphenated word of this post. Promise.)

Series Navigation

<< #40D4W – Day 1: Check your ego at the door#40D4W – Day 3: A roll of the dice >>