Restocking my mom’s old apocalypse cellar has taught me a lot about preparedness
My mother was right.
It’s taken me far too long to admit that. I used to roll my eyes every time my sweet, devout Catholic mom insisted that the Spicuzza family prepare for the worst. And when I say the worst, I mean the apocalypse. When I was growing up in the 1980s, Marianne Spicuzza truly believed that we were on the brink of Armageddon. She thought the Antichrist would arrive at any moment in an effort to trick Christians into forsaking God and following Satan instead.
Part of her campaign to save the souls of her children involved transforming the cellar of our Shorewood home into a stockpile for the End of Days. It overflowed with an endless supply of nonperishables, from Campbell’s soup and StarKist tuna to dehydrated potato flakes. There was also a lot of Jell-O, pork and beans and cream-style corn.
My mom was certain that the time was coming when only those willing to renounce God and accept the “mark of the beast” would be able to use credit cards, buy groceries or hold jobs. And she certainly didn’t want any of her children to join the dark side.
“Laugh now, but you’ll thank me when you have to choose between eating this and having 666 tattooed on your forehead so you can buy groceries,” she’d say with a smile when any of us teased her about her Armageddon cellar.
These days, I know better than to laugh at a prepared mother.
As coronavirus has spread its cruel devastation across the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about my mom, who died after a heart attack in 1997.
I now live with my husband and daughter in the old Spicuzza family home. In early March, I wiped down the shelves of my mom’s cellar with Clorox Disinfecting Wipes and restocked them with a fresh supply of Campbell’s soup, pasta, cereal and macaroni and cheese. A modest supply of toilet paper, hand soap, disinfecting wipes and paper towels is down there, too.
It’s not nearly as elaborate as her stash, but it should be enough food and supplies to last us a week or two.
Something about seeing those shelves stocked again has been oddly comforting.
“Mom would be so proud,” my brother, David, said when I told him.
It’s true. I suspect that by January, back when it seemed like the crisis was halfway around the world, my mom would have implemented strict disaster preparedness measures and started providing detailed daily updates — not to mention shopping lists — to my brothers, sisters and me. Which honestly doesn’t sound too bad at this point.
There was something else about my mother, though, that made her even better at preparing for the worst. Her kindness.
She often babysat the kids down the block when their single mom had to go to work. She drove elderly neighbors to church or went grocery shopping for them. She took older relatives to lunch when they were lonely and drove them to doctor’s appointments and hair salons.
The last argument we had was just after Christmas in 1996, not long after she was released from the hospital after suffering a massive heart attack. She wanted me to drive her in the middle of a snowstorm to drop off money for a neighbor who had asked to borrow a few hundred dollars.
I finally agreed but was ready to storm into the woman’s office and yell at her for asking someone recovering from a heart attack to bring her money in the middle of a blizzard.
My mom begged me not to, explaining that the woman was a single mother who’d spent too much on Christmas presents for her children and didn’t have enough money to pay rent. She was worried they’d be evicted.
“Please Mary, this is how I want to live,” she said through tears.
My mom truly took care of all of us until her last breath. Less than a month later, she collapsed reading bedtime stories to my niece.
Even though she seemed convinced that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, my mom was determined to keep trying to save it. Or at least make her small corner of it as safe, loving and kind as possible.
I imagine that she is now up in heaven, sitting next to my father, beaming down on me and my coronavirus cellar — possibly with a cocktail in one hand, her beloved salted cashews or bridge mix in another — as she thinks to herself, “I told you so.”