How To Take Control In Ruth Reichl's Tender At The Bone

In the book, Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl, Ruth learns many lessons from the many experiences she encounters throughout her life, including how to take control of different situations. As a little girl, she grew up in a food oriented house with her mother. At a young age, Ruth does not know how to manage her mother’s erratic behavior. Throughout her life, she grows up to meet to people and learns how to become successful in something that she loves to do, cooking. Knowing how her mother was when she was younger, Ruth automatically assumes that nothing has change but, seventeen years later, she learns how her mother’s manic depression has worsened. Ruth went through a lot of different stages in her life to learn how to take control of her

As her mother is preparing for Bob’s engagement party she starts to become manic. She is very irrational almost everything she does. She wants everything to go perfect, not knowing that that is almost impossible, and the way that she is handling things would not lead to a successful outcome. Only twelve years old, Ruth tried to keep things in order. “I went around behind her desperately stuffing things back into closest to create some semblance of order.” (15) Ruth’s mother, the manic woman, does not realize that her actions are not going to get her anywhere. The things that she does, has no reasoning behind it. “The Automat sells leftovers for almost nothing at the end of the day, so I just took everything they had. What are you going to do with it? Why, serve it. In what? Big bowls. But you don’t have anything to put in bug bowls, all you have is hundreds of things to put in little bowls.” (16) The manic woman is oblivious of her surroundings and of her absurd behavior. She is the only person who does not notice that the food she serves is capable of killing people. Ruth’s mother shows absolutely no sympathy for anyone’s health and