Cook Less - Smile More

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Sep 14, 1916

Cook Less — Smile More

THERE was a vegetable soup that had required several hours of preparation and cooking; a chicken fried to a perfect turn; potatoes that had been baked, the inside removed, mashed to a cream, seasoned with cream, put in the skins again, and reheated in the oven; cauliflower with a cream dressing; a salad of lettuce, pineapple that had been bought that morning, sliced, and cut in cubes, and nuts that had taken a half hour for the cracking and picking, and mayonnaise that had made a right arm ache with the stirring and beating; jam of home make; tiny hot biscuits; and hot apple pie with whipped cream.

“What part of the chicken shall I give you?” The husband paused with serving fork in hand.

“I don’t want any. I don’t want any dinner at all. I’m too tired to eat,” with a long sigh.

“Then why do you go to so much trouble? The children and I would be satisfied with a simpler meal.”

“I guess I know my duty to my family.”

There was the silence that marks the knowledge of a futility of argument, and the father and children ate a perfectly cooked meal without comment or enjoyment; for at the foot of the table sat a woman who ate nothing, who sighed when she gave the baby its milk, when she served the dessert, who sighed with every breath, even, and wore the expression of a martyr.

When Serena, the oldest daughter, repeated her employer’s compliment over some acceptable work she had done that day, it was her father who gave her a smile of encouragement. The mother remembered that she, too, had worked that day, and sighed. When Tom, aged ten, related an amusing incident that had happened in school, mother was the only one at the table who didn’t laugh. She was too tired to laugh. She was too tired to live. She only sighed.

The next evening Serena was a guest at the Whites, next door. It was warm. The open dining-room windows revealed the Whites and their five children and Serena sitting at table. Across the fence came sounds of repeated laughter. Mrs. Brown paused between sighings to look across the way; and every time she looked, she sighed deeper. She could not see how Mrs. White with such a large family to cook for could laugh like that.

“What,” she asked of Serena a few hours later, in a reproachful tone, for she remembered the laughing, “did you have to eat?”

Serena wasn’t sure if she could remember. They had talked so much she hadn’t noticed what they were eating, except that the dinner was good. Soup? — No, there wasn’t any soup. Vegetables? — Yes, mashed potatoes, with creamed onions and Lima beans. Salad? — Lettuce with a simple French dressing. Dessert? — Little sponge cakes bought at the bakery and covered with a custard. Was it good? Oh, everything was good! she had never enjoyed anything so much in her life.

But wasn’t that a plain meal to serve a guest? Serena didn’t think so. She couldn’t have eaten more; everything was good, and Mrs. White was so jolly.

“I had more than that for our dinner,” said Mrs. Brown, resentfully, “and there was no one here but your father and brothers.” This with a sigh, the corners of her mouth drooping.

Serena looked at her thoughtfully. Mrs. Brown resented the look.

“I cook so much for my family,” she began defensively, “that I am too tired to be what you call jolly. I,” growing more antagonistic, though she could not explain why, “know my duty to my family.”

“So does Mrs. White know hers,” answered Serena sorrowfully. “She cooks less than you do, but she smiles more.”

“Cook less and smile more.” The words rang through Mrs. Brown’s brain the next morning when she beat batter for muffins, whipped up an omelet, put potatoes in the oven to bake, and prepared chipped beef with cream for the family breakfast. She could not go to the school exhibition, she told Tom at breakfast, because she had a ginger pudding to make that would require four hours’ steaming; she couldn’t eat lunch with Serena and her father down town because there was an angel cake to be made that would require at least an hour to beat. Both refusals were made with a sigh.

As she turned from the door after seeing the last child start to school, she caught a glimpse of Mrs. White starting off to the school exhibition with her children. “I wonder,” she thought grimly, “what my family would think of me if I left my cooking for such a trivial excuse.”

As if in answer to her question, there rang through her ears her daughter’s words of the evening before: “She cooks less than you do, but she smiles more.”

The words hammered at her brain all day, keeping time with the egg beater, the nutcracker, and the paring knife. She baked, she fried, she steamed, she boiled, passing from stove to table, the words ringing in her ears no matter with what task her hands were engaged.

Perhaps, she thought, when, later in the day she caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror, Mrs. White was right, and she was wrong. There were deep wrinkles in her forehead; Mrs. White had none. Her eyes were tired and listless; Mrs. White’s were full of purpose and laughter. Her cheeks were white and hollow; she saw a vision of Mrs. White’s, plump and pink. The corners of her mouth drooped unbecomingly, so unbecomingly she turned away with a sigh.

The sigh! That was what made her face so hideously old. She must quit sighing, and laugh more. She must cook less and smile more! She turned back to the mirror and tried the effect of a smile on her face. It was magical!

Then, with her chin in her hands, she sat before her mirror a long, long time for one who regarded every minute as of so much value in the general results in making a pie or a pudding. She stared earnestly into her own eyes, and through them into her own soul. And she saw there a woman who regarded the feeding of a family her sole duty to it; who thought nothing of her children’s hearts and brains and souls, being concerned solely with their stomachs; who made no attempt to be companionable to her husband save through the medium of a rich pudding or pie. She saw there a woman who had no higher ambition than to serve an elaborate meal, and whose family were beginning to take her at her own price mark.

She shuddered. She had worked so hard for her family—so much harder than Mrs. White worked for hers,—and her family loved her the less for it.

Her children never trooped into the kitchen after school, as Mrs. White’s did. There was a pie, a cake, or a pudding in the oven, and a step across the floor might make it fall. Her children never played around her when she cooked, for her cooking had always been too elaborate and complex for such interruptions as childish needs and questions. She never amused her children at the table with jokes, or entertained them with bedtime stories, for she was too tired.

She never knew how long she sat there taking an inventory of her soul, but it was a long time; and when she returned to the kitchen, there was a smile on her face, a smile that was still there when her family gathered around a simple meal that night, a smile that grew into a laugh several times during the evening, that dimpled her cheeks when her husband praised the meal. “Your cooking improves all the time,” he said, with a look that reflected the love in his wife’s face.

This time the smile swept away every wrinkle. She knew she had never cooked less.—The Mother’s Magazine.