My mom was a “stay at home” mom. She was a nurse first, and after having children – 9 in total – she “stayed at home”, except when she didn’t.

I do not have children. Though it was a conscious decision not to become a parent, it took me awhile as an adult to feel like an adult, and it often seemed that having children was, perhaps, the ultimate signifier that one had grown up. Without children of my own, was I still a child myself?

In my thirties, my husband and I became very active in our community of Hoboken, New Jersey. He was appointed to the city’s Planning Board, I to the Library Board and the board of a nonprofit. We ran initiatives to secure funding for park space and supported anti-corruption candidates for local offices. For a period of time, we frequently had meetings to attend more evenings than not. One night, as I hustled out of our apartment to get to a library meeting, I became aware of a sense of pride about it. Something felt very grown up to me about how we were spending our time. I felt, more than usual, like I was an adult. “Only adults would spend their evenings going to meetings,” is an approximation of what was going through my head.

That might seem weird. Or random. Or insignificant. But here’s the thing: when I was growing up, my mom – my stay-at-home mom – was the President of our school board, a participant in our parish council, an ESL tutor, and a volunteer trainer at the Literacy Coalition. Many of those things happened in the evenings. She’d feed us, change her clothes, gather her purse, and go to meetings. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but it seemed important. What I realized the night that I became more of an adult in my own mind was that I was doing something she did. She was (still is) my model of what it means to be a grown up and going to meetings at night meant that I was like her. She had given me an example of adulthood that did not depend on motherhood, and it was everything in that moment.

I had another moment like this recently, as it occurred to me how much she taught me about “staying at home”.

I love cooking. The process of chopping and preparing is therapeutic to me and I love flouting the parts of recipes that offend my sensibilities to make them my own. But a couple weeks ago, as I pulled roasted cabbage steaks from the oven and a chicken mushroom thing off the stove, I felt weary at the thought of all the cooking I’ve done since we all started staying at home. Even as I’m grateful for the food we have and I appreciate that we’ve eaten vastly less restaurant or takeout food than we normally do, cooking felt like a bit of a drag and the thought of continuing like this for at least another month made me ache for a return to our previous ways.

But it also made my think of my mom. Growing up, we ate at restaurants or picked up carryout, once, maybe twice a month. And we didn’t do frozen dinners either. We sat down and ate dinner together every night and my mom made every meal, with balanced nutrition and wonderful flavor. She had children living in her home for 34 years and night after night, year after year, she nourished us with thought and foresight and care. We lived out in the country and she shopped less often than we do, planning ahead (without fancy Pinterest templates), saving with coupons and paying attention to store specials. She pulled meat from the freezer with adequate time for thawing, considered everyone’s preferences (and picked battles accordingly), and made sure we never ran out of milk or fruit or ice cream.

The night I realized I was tired of our social distance-imposed routine, I again had one of those moments, where an image of my mom managing our kitchen popped into my head and I thought “I’m doing what she did.” I was flooded with a new recognition of how hard she worked (and still does) and everything felt manageable again. If I could be like her, I could do this.

There are other stay at home lessons I learned from her that have been vital in the last few weeks. Waking up to a clean kitchen every morning is valuable both practically – so you can make breakfast with efficiency – and emotionally. Basic routines, carried out with flexibility, are the key to sanity. Grilled cheese sandwiches, made with love, can brighten up a whole day. In pre-pandemic days, I worked around those truths, too busy or distracted to commit. If I’m going to be a grown up, I think I’ll hold onto them though.

I’ve never been more grateful, for these essential ways you show your love. Thank you, Mom.