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| Just one corner of Baker Food Co-op. |
When I was little,
my mom got together with a couple of her friends to order organic food in
bulk. We had the van to haul it, and the
other two had driver’s licenses. After a
few years, many more friends wanted to join in, but the van couldn’t haul
enough, and nobody had room in their home to divide up that much,
anyway, so they came up with a plan to form a food co-op. Those three women, along with a handful of
other folks, met around our big dining table.
They hammered out articles of incorporation, filled out non-profit
paperwork, and discussed by-laws and boards.
My mother had no degree, and at that time, no real business experience. However, she had grown up with
entrepreneurial parents, she knew food, and she was an absolute budget queen. She was starting to work part time in a local
restaurant, but she still considered feeding her family to be her primary job (though as a
70’s feminist, you’d not have heard her say it that way). She held meetings, argued ethics, read
everything available on sustainable, organic food production and consumption,
and spent hours on the phone tracking down sources. This was long before internet and unlimited
long-distance.
And where am I in
this story? I’m the kid at the table,
with her own cup of Seattle Spice tea, listening to it all, or in the next
room, “holding meetings” with the children of those other folks.
What started as
three women and a van grew into a true co-op, with a downtown location open to
the public, and significant discounts for working members, which make health food in my home town cheaper than typical grocery store fare.
Last time I was home for a visit, I stopped in for a few things, and the clerk ran them
through on my folks' membership number. A
clerk in training raised an eyebrow, and the other clerk explained who
mom is. Still, the trainee looked
unsure.
“Look,” I
explained, half joking, “My whole childhood is invested in this place. I painted posters for the windows
after school, I fell asleep to the sound of Mom balancing the books on an old
fashioned adding machine, and countless family weekends were spent building shelves, hauling produce, and re-packaging bulk cheese. If mom and her friends had started
it any earlier, my first words would have been “non-profit corporation”, and
I’d have teethed on the drafts of the by-laws that covered every surface in our
house for months. The co-op got my mom, so I get her discount, once every few years.”
Sure I wished my mom
had come to more of my baseball games and been backstage for my ballet recitals. I wish now that I had a few more memories of Mom and
me playing together, but I think no
matter what our moms give us, we wish for something more, or other. I envied the kids whose moms brought cupcakes
to school, and sewed the costumes for recitals, but in hindsight, I’d say I did
alright. My mom taught me young to bake
my own cupcakes and sew my own costumes, so she could get out in the world and
show me how to be a woman with vision, passion, and tenacity. Cupcakes are overrated.
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