When I was little, we lived in Newfoundland, Canada. That’s where Mom decided we needed a bowl of hot oatmeal to start every morning.  She tried to convince us by saying, “Girls, it’s going to keep you healthy.” We watched her stir the gloppy stuff in the saucepan, but to us, it was just plain yucky: its looks, its color, its texture, its taste, its, well, downright gloppiness. We didn’t care if she said it was healthy and good for us.

Mom stuck with this repulsive plan to enhance our diets, but we were stuck with the god-awful healthy food: liver, or the dreaded Brussels sprouts, and now oatmeal? Nutritious or not, we hated them all.

Of necessity, my sister and I plotted clever strategies to rid ourselves of these horrors without actually swallowing them. Urgent needs to use the bathroom to plop the vile items hidden in our cheeks into the toilet bowl or shoving the unwanted stuff into our pockets worked with some food, but what could we do with oatmeal? It seemed that we would be forced to eat the gloppy stuff forever unless we developed a perfect, no-fail plan.

I was the older, and a big girl in second grade so I chose the morning to enact our perfect, no-fail plan and stage the Mutiny Against Mom and the Oats. That morning, I looked her straight in the eye, and lifting my chin, announced, “No more glop, Mom, or I’m running away from home. And I’m not kidding.”

She struggled against a smile. “Hey, hold your horses there, Missy. No, no, you’re going to sit at the table til you finish your ‘glop,’ that’s what you’re going to do. You might have to sit here forever if that’s what it takes, my dear, or until you’re old and gray like me, your darling mother. So, get eating. And I’m not kidding either.”

See, she had a plan, too.

But when I made the proclamation that snowy February morning, my sister looked away, suddenly mute, and seemed to abandon backing me up. In that instant, it was my battle—not hers. She wanted no trouble. She wanted no oatmeal, true, but even more, she wanted no trouble. Although it really didn’t matter what my sister said or didn’t say. And I didn’t care what Mom said either. Because I didn’t believe I would have to sit there forever.

My sister parked herself at the breakfast table like a good little girl and began to stir her glop slowly, head down, hiding her guilty conscience, waiting for the school bus to come and honk her away from the table, away from the glop. When the bus did come, she left with an uneasy glance at me—me, the one held hostage by the conspiracy we had formulated together.

I sat at the dining room table, brooding, watching her escape to freedom, and watching my oatmeal congeal. I passed time by kicking the table leg and waiting til Mom would change her mind. I knew this would be over soon. She couldn’t hold out.

Eventually Mom joined me at the table for her lunch. I was kicking the table in earnest now, but she ignored it and just smiled.

I sat. I sat furious and betrayed: a lonely and bitter martyr for the cause.

After school, Eve didn’t bring her snack of brownies to the table, but I could hear her expressing delight in the kitchen with a series of rapturous sighs. I hoped she felt embarrassed, but everyone knows chocolate can cancel many alliances and agreements. Yet it didn’t cancel my problem. I certainly had no delight that day. I was the one who had rebelled against Mom, not her. Not her, the one chomping the brownies. No, I was the one with the aging glop, angry, and still sitting there.

Mom shushed Daddy’s questions when he came home from work. He was curious about me still in my PJs and still in the same spot, but he was silent.

Soon we all were at the table, grace was said, and their greedy hands reached out for the meal. Dishes were passed from hand to hand with everyone exclaiming over the heavenly smelling dinner. I felt invisible in the midst of their banquet and kicked the table leg with renewed vigor. All I was allowed to consume was the gelatinous oatmeal, still in its green bowl, which, despite my prayers to the Lord God above, had not disappeared. My spoon stood up straight in the jellied gray glob.

This wasn’t working the way I had planned.

In time, the sun sank into a pinked sky. Then the moon shone through the dining room curtains, not yet shut to the velvety blue glittering with pinholed stars. I was bored. I was hungry. But mostly, now I was mad.

After reading my sister her bedtime stories and turning out the lights at the front of the house, Mom came into the dining room where I had been sitting since breakfast. “So, honey, what’s your plan?” she asked kindly, sitting across from me and leaning her elbows on the table. “Shall I heat this up for you? You only need to eat a bite, and we’ll forget all about this. Then you can have a real dinner, OK?”

I glared at her. I hated this day. I hated this oatmeal. But most of all, I hated her. I looked down at my enemy in the green bowl, then rammed my chair back and stomped to the closet to yank out a suitcase.

“No. I said I was running away,” I spat out. “I said I was running away and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not a liar. I’m running away,” and I clumped up the stairs, the empty suitcase smacking against my legs at each step.

Mom followed and opened my top dresser drawer. Underwear, socks, a few shirts came out, and reaching under the bottom bunk, she brought out my pink snow boots. “Can I lend you a hand?” she asked helpfully, organizing the clothes in the suitcase.

“Spam. I need Spam, a thing of cabbage, and more socks. That’s all I need from this stupid ol’ family.”

She brought me the requested items along with my coat from the hall closet. She held it open for me to struggle into.

“I can do it myself,” I shouted tearfully, fists clenched. Then taking a risk I cried, red-faced, “Damn it all to hell!”

Mom was working hard not to smile, and that made me angrier. My coat askew, I wrestled the suitcase down the steps to the back door unbolted to the gusty winds of night. Before she closed it to the twenty-degree temperature and me, she tried to catch me in a hug. I wriggled away, fuming, tears of frustration wetting my splotchy face.

Mom spoke to my fleeing back. “Hey, don’t forget to write us occasionally, OK? Let us know how things turn out for you, OK? We’ll miss you.”

The door clicked shut.

I know she must have squinted out the kitchen window through the snowflakes, watching me leave a trail of footprints in the snow. I shuffled through the flurries with my head down, angling toward the garage—the winds buffeting me—dragging my clumsy suitcase behind. The wind moaned around the pines in the backyard. The snow crunched. The moon didn’t seem as bright as before. I could barely see through my furious tears.

It came to me suddenly.

She was really going to let me leave.

Mom wouldn’t even let me walk to the end of the street by myself, but she was going to let me just walk away? This was not how the plan was supposed to work. She was supposed to change her mind, not let me walk off into the dark of night. Tears rolled down my cold cheeks.

I was terrified.

My mom didn’t love me.

Later, she told me she was terrified too. She had taken stock. She had known for a while now that her plan had gone on too long. And, she wondered, what worth was there if she won this battle? None, there was no value, she realized, and at that point, went for her own coat to rescue me, to bring me home, to gather me in. “It was,” Mom told me years later, “one of the silliest things I’d ever done as a parent, all this, just to follow through with my own stupid plan? I was just too hard-headed with you kids.”

She reached for the doorknob, all bundled up and zipped into her parka, just as my icy hand reached the door. I knocked timidly. I knew I had lost. I was fully prepared to eat the solidified glop.

And to admit she had won.

But when the door opened, Mom bent down and opened her arms to me, her breath warm against my face, hugging me, our coats bunching up, my suitcase forgotten on the porch.

Holding hands, we walked into the dining room, where the green bowl still sat, and with conspiratorial smiles, threw the congealed oatmeal into the kitchen garbage can.

We stayed up late that night, Mom and me. I was the prodigal rewarded with Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, far too many brownies, and the promise of no more oatmeal for breakfast.

Ever.

She and I laughed and giggled about just about everything that night in our kitchen that was shut tight to the cold and wind and snow outside. After midnight, she tucked me into my bed with another long snuggly hug and a goodnight kiss. I slept, full-tummied and content.

And the next morning, when my little sister saw Kellogg’s Sugar Pops in our green bowls? Well, she knew then I had won. No more glop.

This skirmish was just one of the many between Mom and me throughout the years. Some battles I could never win, and didn’t; some battles I actually won; some I let her win because of what I realized that February day.

My mom did love me.

Guest essay written by Deb Nordlie. Deb has lived in five states and three countries, married once, had two children, and taught English since dinosaurs ruled the earth. After a lifetime of writing assignment sheets, she’s branched into life stories, believing “we are all anthologies filled with marvelous short stories and poems.” Currently, she teaches English in adult school and scribbles away at the Great American Novel.