Here's a poem I wrote about GREEN JELLO years ago. It won an award at the Redrock Writers Chaparral Poetry contest years ago. My claim to fame...lol!
GREEN JELLO
The mainstay of every Mormon mother’s
repertoire of salads or desserts:
J-E-L-L-O!
It must be green and filled with other
tidbits:
nutritious veggies or delicious fruits
shredded carrots or grated apples, slices
of banana
maybe some whipped cream
as well as cottage cheese and nuts.
No family meal is complete without it,
reminding one that life must have order.
Chaos ensues in a family when a teenage
son
is finally bold enough to say out loud,
I don’t like your green jello salad.
His good mother can ignore the outburst
or pursue the arguments of
how nutritious and delicious it is,
how it adds variety to the family meal
until she is blue in the face.
Or there is the coward’s way out:
avoid conflict at all costs,
hide the tears of rejection,
stop making the dish, and try to forget
being the perfect Mormon mother.
I chose the latter, until years later
becoming an empty nest parent,
I suddenly realized...
I do like green jello salad
and I have missed it at suppertime.