Straight green stalks rose almost twice my height. I ran my fingers along the grooved green husk leaves tight-wrapped around one ear, and touched the spilling silk. It was prettier than the corn-husk doll at home on my mother's shelf.
Pick one, she said. And she helped me twist the ear until it snapped. In the kitchen she showed me how the husk peels back to reveal the golden kernels in their stately rows, how to pull out the last stubborn threads of silk. And I asked, how does this get in a can? And with a knife she sliced off the kernels, neatly. Oh please, I begged, can't we make something with it?
And she pulled a step stool up to the stove, and she taught me to make garden vegetable soup. And when I tasted that corn it was like a revelation of corn, a Platonic ideal of the Original Corn. But of course I didn't know those words like Platonic then. Platonic is what I think now, when I remember that taste. On that day I just knew that despite eating canned corn at least twice a week for dinner at home, I had never really tasted corn before.
***
She came to pick us up in her blue Ford Cordoba, the car with impeccably clean seats. My younger sister, the sweet one, the pretty one, like always, simpered and batted her eyes for shotgun, pointing pitifully at her once-broken leg (the leg that had already healed perfectly almost year ago— the leg that posed her absolutely no problem, thank you very much, when climbing trees or running on the playground). But the charm that almost unfailingly moved my mother and father rolled off this tiny, twinkle-eyed woman like rain off a duck.
"She's older. She has longer legs." And I sat in the front seat of a car for the first time in over a year, marveling at my good fortune, while my sister, who would have cried fat crocodile tears in any other person's car, pouted silently in the backseat, wondering how her spell had been broken.
At the Piggly Wiggly, as we marveled at porcelain figurines of ballerinas, she bought us each a Sprite. "Don't tell your mother," she said. My sister drank hers in conspiratorial glee, but I, ever the Puritan, took tiny sips. Everyone knew my mother had secret, invisible, almost-all-seeing eyes in the back of her head.
I didn't know, then, about the universal Soda and Candy Exception that is granted to grandmothers.
I should have drunk that soda.
***
We heard third-hand that she was riding through Vegas on the back of a motorcycle. A few weeks later, we heard she'd gotten a tattoo.
My mother was still furious at her for selling the family house. I was a little mad too, considering we'd been staying there at the time and had needed to move on short notice.
Secretly, though, I was thrilled by the image of her speeding past the neon lights, the wind ruffling her cropped grey hair. When I told my the kids at school, "My grandmother rides motorcycles in the desert and has a tattoo," they didn't believe me. Of course, I never told them the tattoo was of a panda. That made the whole picture seem somewhat less daring.
***
Last month, my aunt emailed to tell me that my grandmother was slowly, stealthily turning the entire grassy landscape of her assisted living community into a decorative food garden. "I try to tell her to save her money for a new computer," she wrote, "but she just keeps buying plants." Her neighbors, my aunt reported, had been recruited, and were now in cahoots in my grandmother's revolt against the grass. There were fruit trees and bean plants popping up everywhere.
In response I emailed my aunt a picture of my son standing in a tomato jungle twice his height, and said, "Grandma might like this picture." And I asked my aunt to show my grandmother my new blog on sustainable food.
A few days later I received in the mail a handwritten note on a scrap of blue paper, in my grandmother's familiar stilted left-hander-forced-to-be-a-right-hander scrawl, announcing my uncle's wedding. The last line, squeezed at the bottom like an afterthought, read, "Love your internet stuff."
***
Yesterday evening I was standing in my vegetable garden, tending to my overgrown tomatoes, when my husband brought the cordless phone out to me. And I stood still pruning and tying tomato branches in an automatic motion like a prayer on a rosary even as I heard the tremble in my mother's voice, and asked, "What's wrong?"
***
As I hold the blue note in my hand, staring at the last words my grandmother wrote to me, knowing there will never be another note, never any more words from her to me, to anyone, I can taste that corn.
Showing posts with label Mother Nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mother Nature. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Food Karma
A few days ago, I found myself sitting at my dinner table, silently rejoicing because, for the first time ever in his life of five and a half years, my son ate a whole hot dog, complete with bun, without my prompting, wheedling, or bargaining with him to get him to finish it.
A hot dog. And not one of those fancy organic locally processed free range all-natural nitrate-free hot dogs, either. Just a hot dog. From Oscar Meyer. I bought it in a bright plastic package at the grocery store, on sale, plucked from a whole refrigerator case full of processed meat.
All right, it was a turkey-based highly processed, highly packaged, nitrite-filled factory farmed meat hot dog. But still.
I am a vegetarian. I am an environmentalist. I am a gardener. I am a from-scratch baker. I read every book Michael Pollan writes. I am concerned about the health and environmental consequences of our heavily industrialized food system. I feel morally troubled, not so much over human consumption of meat in principle (hunting animals for food is, after all, a thing we apex predators evolved to do), but over the particular treatment of domestic animals in the factory farm system.
When I can afford it, I try to buy locally grown and/or organic food. In the summer, I grow my most of my own vegetables and buy my much of my fruit at the farmer's market. I sneakily swap free-range chicken and beef into my carnivorous husband's diet.
And yet I take my son to Burger King and let him choose a hamburger that has probably been processed with a mechanically rendered beef fat slurry treated with ammonia. I let him eat cheap chicken nuggets sometimes from Tyson (which once plead guilty to 20 violations of the federal Clean Water Act in a town just three hours away from mine, was investigated by the Justice Department for illegally smuggling Mexican undocumented workers into the country to work for little pay in dangerous conditions, and was investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for animal cruelty after a shocking video released by PETA).
And I rejoice when he eats a hot dog.
Before my son was born, I, like so many people who do not have children but plan to, held a vision of my future as a parent that was thoroughly colored by idealistic naivete.
Certainly, I had encountered children who were picky eaters before I myself became a parent. I had gone to school with children who would only eat cheese pizza, plain hamburgers, and french fries; I had been a babysitter to a girl who would not eat anything that was green; my own (much) younger brother once went through a month-long phase during which all he would eat willingly was white rice seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.
Outwardly I sympathized with the parents of these children (including my own beleaguered mother), and would never have breathed a word of criticism to their faces, but, secretly, I judged them. By and large, I thought, parents of picky eaters who subsisted on junk food simply hadn't tried hard enough to get their children to eat more wholesome things.
Wasn't my own mother much more lax with my little brother, her youngest child, in every regard than she had been with me, the oldest? Didn't she allow him liberal access, as a toddler, to nutritionally questionable foods like white bread and soda, both of which had been largely forbidden to me in my early years in favor of wheat bread and juice?
Not that I blamed her, exactly, for going a little soft with my kid brother — she was much busier as a mother of three than she had been as a mother of one, after all — but, well.
I was sure I that, whenever I got around to having my own child, I would be capable of preventing any junk food addictions and overcoming any picky tendencies with proper planning and diligence.
My child would learn to prefer fresh fruit to cakes or cookies, because I would limit sweets and provide a wide variety of the tastiest fresh organic produce at all times.
But, at the same time, my child would not develop a secret, deprivation-driven obsession with desserts and confections, because I would not deny them to him altogether; he would have candy at Halloween, and cake at his birthdays; I would be reasonable.
My child would learn to love broccoli and spinach, because I would introduce vegetables at an early age, and eat them at every meal myself in front of him.
My child, if he ate meat, would learn to be ethical in his choices. I would do my best to serve him organic, hormone-free milk, and eggs from free-range chickens. I would offer him sausage from locally hunted wild deer, or hamburgers from ethically raised grass-fed beef. We would not eat at fast food chain restaurants except under serious duress. (Not that I always followed this rule myself, of course. But I would when I was a parent.) When he was old enough to understand, I would tell him why I, as his mother, made these choices about our food.
My child would never develop a taste for highly processed, environmentally hazardous junk foods, like Oscar Meyer hot dogs, because I simply would not have them in my house.
My child would never go on a month-long rice-only jag.
Right.
I had no idea, before my son was born — in fact, I had no idea before I started trying to feed my son solid food — that I would one day find myself praying desperately to a variety of divine beings I don't even necessarily believe in that my son would eat even just one bite of white rice.
That despite my best intentions, despite my most diligent efforts, despite my careful consultation of all the most respected child-rearing manuals (from Sears to Spock), despite advice from family members and friends and pediatricians and dieticians and nutritionists and, later, as the situation grew more obviously dire, a whole host of medical specialists with much longer titles, the goal posts for getting my child to "eat healthily" would move from "Teach him to eat organic vegetables and whole grains!" to "Teach him to eat, um, anything besides breastmilk and three flavors of baby food?" to "Dear God, please get my child to eat ANYTHING AT ALL."
Yet that is where I found myself, just a few years ago: at the table, in a house with a pantry and fridge filled top to bottom with healthy, tasty, natural food, facing an underweight, slowly wasting toddler with failure to thrive, desperately trying to feed a clearly desperately hungry child who would eat almost nothing I offered him.
At his thinnest during this period of self-imposed starvation — at around 12-18 months,when his weight was no longer even present on the growth chart for a child his height and age — Isaac was so thin he looked sick to me. Though he was an energetic, intelligent little boy with bright eyes and a quick smile, when his clothes were off, you could count every rib and see every knob of his spine. He lacked the characteristic pillowy paunch of a toddler. His belly, instead, curved inward. I could not bear to look at his terrible thinness, and yet I could not look away. He looked like a public service poster of a starving child. But he was a real child, in front of me. He was MY child.
These were, without a doubt, the most frustrating, depressing, terrifying few months of my entire life. When I think back on it now, I still shudder. I've been attacked on the street for the last ten dollars in my purse; I've spent nights sleeping hungry and cold in car too young to understand why I'd lost my home and not knowing if I'd see a home again; I've had my heart so utterly broken by a lover's betrayal that I felt it might never beat again. And I would take any of those days over my worst days of fear and helplessness worrying over the health of my son.
I spent thousands of dollars I did not actually have at this time taking my son to expensive medical specialists. An endocrinologist. A pediatric gastroenterologist. A pediatric food allergist. A child psychologist. He was tested for every genetic disease, every bacterial or viral infection, every hormonal imbalance or food intolerance or oral-motor developmental delay or structural intestinal defect these experts could think of that might cause an otherwise healthy and normally developing child to simply refuse to eat. I held my screaming toddler down while phlebotomists with impossibly large needles withdrew vial after vial of his blood from his tiny arms. I strapped him to a table while specialists taped bizarre plastic devices to his private parts to collect urine samples. I restrained him while an allergist pricked his naked back with 40 simultaneous needles. I watched him wheel away, sedated and anesthetized, to a room where a doctor would shove a camera snake down his throat to examine his intestines. Every time I held my child and allowed someone to hurt him in the name of helping him, I wished desperately that they were hurting me instead.
And for months of this, no one could give me an answer.
I was constantly worried that my son might stop eating altogether require surgery to install a feeding tube. I was terrified — cold sweats, nightmares terrified —that someone among this team of experts who could not solve the problem of why my child would not eat would decide that I must be purposefully starving him — that I was abusing him, that I was one of those awful evil Munchausen by proxy parents (which I only even knew existed after watching The Sixth Sense). During my nightly fevered internet searches for things like "failure to thrive" and "post surgical post-traumatic feeding disorder of infancy" and "infantile anorexia" and "Dear Sweet Internet Gods, why the F@#K won't my starving child eat?" I had come across a single message board posting by the friend of a relative of an innocent woman who had supposedly had her failure to thrive child taken away from her by the state under suspicion of abuse, only to have child services discover that the child would not eat in foster care, either, and in fact had a terrible medical condition underlying her self-starving ways, which of course only worsened during the stress of separation from her parents, etc.
Because I hated myself (what mother who can't successfully feed her child doesn't hate herself?), I bookmarked it and reread it from time to time in ritual self-flagellation.
In reality, I spent nearly every waking hour either attempting to get my child to eat, or thinking about how I ought best to attempt to get my child to eat.
I was a terrible bore at playdates and children's birthday parties. "What is going on with you?" the unsuspecting might ask. And I would say, "Oh, my son still isn't eating well at all. I'm very worried. I don't know what to do." And then, compulsively I would relate, in obsessive detail, my latest medically-guided attempt at intervention. A detached part of myself would observe my nervous patter and mentally shout, "Change the subject! Talk about the weather!"
But for me, there was no weather. There were only Days When Isaac Ate Well, and Days When Isaac Did Not Eat.
Friends and family gave me constant well-meaning advice that made me want to punch them in the face. It's not natural, or at least is certainly seems unnatural, for a seemingly healthy, hungry child to refuse all food for months on end, and so naturally most people with casual knowledge of my situation assumed I must be making some simple parenting mistake.
"Don't try so hard to encourage him to eat." "Try harder to encourage him to eat." "Stop breastfeeding him." "Nurse him more often." "Strap him to his high chair and don't let him leave all day until he's finished his whole plate." "Tell him if he doesn't eat one bite of peas you'll make him eat the whole bowl." "Try plainer foods." "Try spicy foods." "Let him see other children eat in front of him." (When he ate with other children, he would, in fact, helpfully give the other children all of his food.) "Get someone else to feed him." (His father, his grandmother, and his aunt had all tried.)
Others assumed I was exaggerating the extent of the problem and advised me he would simply grow out of not eating if I just left him alone.
Every time I spoke in public about my son's eating problems, unintentionally hurtful judgment and well-meaning but uninformed advice surrounded me until I thought I would drown in frustration and self-loathing. And yet I had nothing else to speak about. Because my days were consumed with trying to solve this problem.
When an occupational therapist finally helped my family find a diagnosis — sensory processing disorder — and I finally, finally found therapies that would slowly but surely help my son overcome the severe tactile sensitivity and texture aversions that were driving his fear of solid food, every bite my son took of every new food seemed like a blessing. It didn't matter, to me, whether that new food was a fresh-picked organic locally grown Winesap apple or a hot dog. It was FOOD, damn it, and my son was eating it. My new motto became "If it has calories, and it's not obviously poison? He can eat it."
I know better, now, than to judge the parents I see feeding their children chicken nuggets and fries and soda at McDonald's. Not until I've walked a mile in their shoes. Not until I've taken the beam from my own eye.
But now, with a solid space of four years between me and the worst trauma and fear over my son's initial failure to eat enough to thrive, I am beginning, once again, to judge myself.
Has my gratitude at his graduation from pathologically picky eater to typical picky eater — his transformation from a child who was thisclose to life on a gastric feeding tube to one of "those" picky children, who only (ONLY?!?) reliably eats plain-tasting sweet breakfast cereals (that must be dry), toast, plain, white flour pancakes with plain syrup, plain scrambled eggs, bacon, chicken nuggets, hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, plain quesadillas, plain macaroni and cheese, Swiss (it must be Swiss!) cheese and crackers, french fries, corn chips, potato chips, ketchup, applesauce, sugar-sweetened cooked carrots, mashed sweet potatoes IF they have marshmallows on top, strawberry-flavored fruit leather, the occasional raisin or dried blueberry, vanilla ice cream, and vanilla or banana-flavored yogurt — has my utter, blessed, soul-healing relief that my child finally eats enough of a variety that we can take him to a fast food restaurant and order something he will actually eat off the menu, given me an unjustified feeling of permission to stop trying in the healthy food department?
Have I given up entirely on that dream of a child who blithely eats homegrown tomatoes, organic green vegetables, Indian lentils, and Thai curried tofu?
How do I feel, really, about my weekly purchase of Tyson chicken and nitrite-laden Oscar Meyer hot dogs?
The truth is, there is a little unhappy voice in the back of my brain that still protests every time when I plop factory-farmed meat and preservative-laden snack foods in my grocery cart. Even when I know we can't really afford this week to try the organic grass-fed beef hot dogs, at the very real risk that my son will reject them because they don't "taste right" like the brand he's accustomed to and they will rot and I will have to throw them away.
I struggle regularly with how hard to push my son about the fact that he eats no green vegetables, at all, ever.
As soon as he was old enough to hold a trowel I started involving him intensively in my work in the family garden, hoping that his enthusiastic affection for the bean and pepper plants he so carefully planted and watered himself might translate into some sort of affection for green peppers or green beans, but that hope was in vain. Oh, he's gamely popped fresh homegrown organic baby peas just picked off the plant into his mouth at my insistence, more than once, and screwed up his face in displeasure, and spit them out again. And I let him.
I've tried ordering beautifully presented, perfectly seasoned vegetables for him at restaurants, and he dutifully tries them and spits them out, and I let him. I've tried hiding vegetables in sauces (which he doesn't much care for anyway) and homemade breads, and he tries them and spits them out, and I let him.
After such a long exhausting battle to get him to eat enough solid food at all, I don't want to make his life, or mine, all about his eating now. But when he's grown, if he still hasn't developed a taste for vegetables or fresh fruit — if his limited diet starts once again to affect his health — if he, ever the sensitive soul, always rescuing stranded earthworms after a rain and asking his father to put spiders outside rather than smash them — realizes the impact of his childhood diet on animals and the environment — will he blame me?
Will he think I didn't try hard enough? Will he think I tried too hard?
A hot dog. And not one of those fancy organic locally processed free range all-natural nitrate-free hot dogs, either. Just a hot dog. From Oscar Meyer. I bought it in a bright plastic package at the grocery store, on sale, plucked from a whole refrigerator case full of processed meat.
All right, it was a turkey-based highly processed, highly packaged, nitrite-filled factory farmed meat hot dog. But still.
I am a vegetarian. I am an environmentalist. I am a gardener. I am a from-scratch baker. I read every book Michael Pollan writes. I am concerned about the health and environmental consequences of our heavily industrialized food system. I feel morally troubled, not so much over human consumption of meat in principle (hunting animals for food is, after all, a thing we apex predators evolved to do), but over the particular treatment of domestic animals in the factory farm system.
When I can afford it, I try to buy locally grown and/or organic food. In the summer, I grow my most of my own vegetables and buy my much of my fruit at the farmer's market. I sneakily swap free-range chicken and beef into my carnivorous husband's diet.
And yet I take my son to Burger King and let him choose a hamburger that has probably been processed with a mechanically rendered beef fat slurry treated with ammonia. I let him eat cheap chicken nuggets sometimes from Tyson (which once plead guilty to 20 violations of the federal Clean Water Act in a town just three hours away from mine, was investigated by the Justice Department for illegally smuggling Mexican undocumented workers into the country to work for little pay in dangerous conditions, and was investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for animal cruelty after a shocking video released by PETA).
And I rejoice when he eats a hot dog.
Before my son was born, I, like so many people who do not have children but plan to, held a vision of my future as a parent that was thoroughly colored by idealistic naivete.
Certainly, I had encountered children who were picky eaters before I myself became a parent. I had gone to school with children who would only eat cheese pizza, plain hamburgers, and french fries; I had been a babysitter to a girl who would not eat anything that was green; my own (much) younger brother once went through a month-long phase during which all he would eat willingly was white rice seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.
Outwardly I sympathized with the parents of these children (including my own beleaguered mother), and would never have breathed a word of criticism to their faces, but, secretly, I judged them. By and large, I thought, parents of picky eaters who subsisted on junk food simply hadn't tried hard enough to get their children to eat more wholesome things.
Wasn't my own mother much more lax with my little brother, her youngest child, in every regard than she had been with me, the oldest? Didn't she allow him liberal access, as a toddler, to nutritionally questionable foods like white bread and soda, both of which had been largely forbidden to me in my early years in favor of wheat bread and juice?
Not that I blamed her, exactly, for going a little soft with my kid brother — she was much busier as a mother of three than she had been as a mother of one, after all — but, well.
I was sure I that, whenever I got around to having my own child, I would be capable of preventing any junk food addictions and overcoming any picky tendencies with proper planning and diligence.
My child would learn to prefer fresh fruit to cakes or cookies, because I would limit sweets and provide a wide variety of the tastiest fresh organic produce at all times.
But, at the same time, my child would not develop a secret, deprivation-driven obsession with desserts and confections, because I would not deny them to him altogether; he would have candy at Halloween, and cake at his birthdays; I would be reasonable.
My child would learn to love broccoli and spinach, because I would introduce vegetables at an early age, and eat them at every meal myself in front of him.
My child, if he ate meat, would learn to be ethical in his choices. I would do my best to serve him organic, hormone-free milk, and eggs from free-range chickens. I would offer him sausage from locally hunted wild deer, or hamburgers from ethically raised grass-fed beef. We would not eat at fast food chain restaurants except under serious duress. (Not that I always followed this rule myself, of course. But I would when I was a parent.) When he was old enough to understand, I would tell him why I, as his mother, made these choices about our food.
My child would never develop a taste for highly processed, environmentally hazardous junk foods, like Oscar Meyer hot dogs, because I simply would not have them in my house.
My child would never go on a month-long rice-only jag.
Right.
I had no idea, before my son was born — in fact, I had no idea before I started trying to feed my son solid food — that I would one day find myself praying desperately to a variety of divine beings I don't even necessarily believe in that my son would eat even just one bite of white rice.
That despite my best intentions, despite my most diligent efforts, despite my careful consultation of all the most respected child-rearing manuals (from Sears to Spock), despite advice from family members and friends and pediatricians and dieticians and nutritionists and, later, as the situation grew more obviously dire, a whole host of medical specialists with much longer titles, the goal posts for getting my child to "eat healthily" would move from "Teach him to eat organic vegetables and whole grains!" to "Teach him to eat, um, anything besides breastmilk and three flavors of baby food?" to "Dear God, please get my child to eat ANYTHING AT ALL."
Yet that is where I found myself, just a few years ago: at the table, in a house with a pantry and fridge filled top to bottom with healthy, tasty, natural food, facing an underweight, slowly wasting toddler with failure to thrive, desperately trying to feed a clearly desperately hungry child who would eat almost nothing I offered him.
At his thinnest during this period of self-imposed starvation — at around 12-18 months,when his weight was no longer even present on the growth chart for a child his height and age — Isaac was so thin he looked sick to me. Though he was an energetic, intelligent little boy with bright eyes and a quick smile, when his clothes were off, you could count every rib and see every knob of his spine. He lacked the characteristic pillowy paunch of a toddler. His belly, instead, curved inward. I could not bear to look at his terrible thinness, and yet I could not look away. He looked like a public service poster of a starving child. But he was a real child, in front of me. He was MY child.
These were, without a doubt, the most frustrating, depressing, terrifying few months of my entire life. When I think back on it now, I still shudder. I've been attacked on the street for the last ten dollars in my purse; I've spent nights sleeping hungry and cold in car too young to understand why I'd lost my home and not knowing if I'd see a home again; I've had my heart so utterly broken by a lover's betrayal that I felt it might never beat again. And I would take any of those days over my worst days of fear and helplessness worrying over the health of my son.
I spent thousands of dollars I did not actually have at this time taking my son to expensive medical specialists. An endocrinologist. A pediatric gastroenterologist. A pediatric food allergist. A child psychologist. He was tested for every genetic disease, every bacterial or viral infection, every hormonal imbalance or food intolerance or oral-motor developmental delay or structural intestinal defect these experts could think of that might cause an otherwise healthy and normally developing child to simply refuse to eat. I held my screaming toddler down while phlebotomists with impossibly large needles withdrew vial after vial of his blood from his tiny arms. I strapped him to a table while specialists taped bizarre plastic devices to his private parts to collect urine samples. I restrained him while an allergist pricked his naked back with 40 simultaneous needles. I watched him wheel away, sedated and anesthetized, to a room where a doctor would shove a camera snake down his throat to examine his intestines. Every time I held my child and allowed someone to hurt him in the name of helping him, I wished desperately that they were hurting me instead.
And for months of this, no one could give me an answer.
I was constantly worried that my son might stop eating altogether require surgery to install a feeding tube. I was terrified — cold sweats, nightmares terrified —that someone among this team of experts who could not solve the problem of why my child would not eat would decide that I must be purposefully starving him — that I was abusing him, that I was one of those awful evil Munchausen by proxy parents (which I only even knew existed after watching The Sixth Sense). During my nightly fevered internet searches for things like "failure to thrive" and "post surgical post-traumatic feeding disorder of infancy" and "infantile anorexia" and "Dear Sweet Internet Gods, why the F@#K won't my starving child eat?" I had come across a single message board posting by the friend of a relative of an innocent woman who had supposedly had her failure to thrive child taken away from her by the state under suspicion of abuse, only to have child services discover that the child would not eat in foster care, either, and in fact had a terrible medical condition underlying her self-starving ways, which of course only worsened during the stress of separation from her parents, etc.
Because I hated myself (what mother who can't successfully feed her child doesn't hate herself?), I bookmarked it and reread it from time to time in ritual self-flagellation.
In reality, I spent nearly every waking hour either attempting to get my child to eat, or thinking about how I ought best to attempt to get my child to eat.
I was a terrible bore at playdates and children's birthday parties. "What is going on with you?" the unsuspecting might ask. And I would say, "Oh, my son still isn't eating well at all. I'm very worried. I don't know what to do." And then, compulsively I would relate, in obsessive detail, my latest medically-guided attempt at intervention. A detached part of myself would observe my nervous patter and mentally shout, "Change the subject! Talk about the weather!"
But for me, there was no weather. There were only Days When Isaac Ate Well, and Days When Isaac Did Not Eat.
Friends and family gave me constant well-meaning advice that made me want to punch them in the face. It's not natural, or at least is certainly seems unnatural, for a seemingly healthy, hungry child to refuse all food for months on end, and so naturally most people with casual knowledge of my situation assumed I must be making some simple parenting mistake.
"Don't try so hard to encourage him to eat." "Try harder to encourage him to eat." "Stop breastfeeding him." "Nurse him more often." "Strap him to his high chair and don't let him leave all day until he's finished his whole plate." "Tell him if he doesn't eat one bite of peas you'll make him eat the whole bowl." "Try plainer foods." "Try spicy foods." "Let him see other children eat in front of him." (When he ate with other children, he would, in fact, helpfully give the other children all of his food.) "Get someone else to feed him." (His father, his grandmother, and his aunt had all tried.)
Others assumed I was exaggerating the extent of the problem and advised me he would simply grow out of not eating if I just left him alone.
Every time I spoke in public about my son's eating problems, unintentionally hurtful judgment and well-meaning but uninformed advice surrounded me until I thought I would drown in frustration and self-loathing. And yet I had nothing else to speak about. Because my days were consumed with trying to solve this problem.
When an occupational therapist finally helped my family find a diagnosis — sensory processing disorder — and I finally, finally found therapies that would slowly but surely help my son overcome the severe tactile sensitivity and texture aversions that were driving his fear of solid food, every bite my son took of every new food seemed like a blessing. It didn't matter, to me, whether that new food was a fresh-picked organic locally grown Winesap apple or a hot dog. It was FOOD, damn it, and my son was eating it. My new motto became "If it has calories, and it's not obviously poison? He can eat it."
I know better, now, than to judge the parents I see feeding their children chicken nuggets and fries and soda at McDonald's. Not until I've walked a mile in their shoes. Not until I've taken the beam from my own eye.
But now, with a solid space of four years between me and the worst trauma and fear over my son's initial failure to eat enough to thrive, I am beginning, once again, to judge myself.
Has my gratitude at his graduation from pathologically picky eater to typical picky eater — his transformation from a child who was thisclose to life on a gastric feeding tube to one of "those" picky children, who only (ONLY?!?) reliably eats plain-tasting sweet breakfast cereals (that must be dry), toast, plain, white flour pancakes with plain syrup, plain scrambled eggs, bacon, chicken nuggets, hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, plain quesadillas, plain macaroni and cheese, Swiss (it must be Swiss!) cheese and crackers, french fries, corn chips, potato chips, ketchup, applesauce, sugar-sweetened cooked carrots, mashed sweet potatoes IF they have marshmallows on top, strawberry-flavored fruit leather, the occasional raisin or dried blueberry, vanilla ice cream, and vanilla or banana-flavored yogurt — has my utter, blessed, soul-healing relief that my child finally eats enough of a variety that we can take him to a fast food restaurant and order something he will actually eat off the menu, given me an unjustified feeling of permission to stop trying in the healthy food department?
Have I given up entirely on that dream of a child who blithely eats homegrown tomatoes, organic green vegetables, Indian lentils, and Thai curried tofu?
How do I feel, really, about my weekly purchase of Tyson chicken and nitrite-laden Oscar Meyer hot dogs?
The truth is, there is a little unhappy voice in the back of my brain that still protests every time when I plop factory-farmed meat and preservative-laden snack foods in my grocery cart. Even when I know we can't really afford this week to try the organic grass-fed beef hot dogs, at the very real risk that my son will reject them because they don't "taste right" like the brand he's accustomed to and they will rot and I will have to throw them away.
I struggle regularly with how hard to push my son about the fact that he eats no green vegetables, at all, ever.
As soon as he was old enough to hold a trowel I started involving him intensively in my work in the family garden, hoping that his enthusiastic affection for the bean and pepper plants he so carefully planted and watered himself might translate into some sort of affection for green peppers or green beans, but that hope was in vain. Oh, he's gamely popped fresh homegrown organic baby peas just picked off the plant into his mouth at my insistence, more than once, and screwed up his face in displeasure, and spit them out again. And I let him.
I've tried ordering beautifully presented, perfectly seasoned vegetables for him at restaurants, and he dutifully tries them and spits them out, and I let him. I've tried hiding vegetables in sauces (which he doesn't much care for anyway) and homemade breads, and he tries them and spits them out, and I let him.
After such a long exhausting battle to get him to eat enough solid food at all, I don't want to make his life, or mine, all about his eating now. But when he's grown, if he still hasn't developed a taste for vegetables or fresh fruit — if his limited diet starts once again to affect his health — if he, ever the sensitive soul, always rescuing stranded earthworms after a rain and asking his father to put spiders outside rather than smash them — realizes the impact of his childhood diet on animals and the environment — will he blame me?
Will he think I didn't try hard enough? Will he think I tried too hard?
Saturday, February 21, 2009
A Dog Is Not the Same as a Child
I love animals. Really, I do. I was the proud owner of a series of cats from the age of six until the year I turned 24, when my last cat passed away at the cat-elderly age of 13, and I decided to give my poor cat-allergic husband a break and not adopt another one. I had a pet dog once, too— a rescue Cairn terrier who was so fiercely attached to and protective of me that he'd bark loudly at any unknown man who got within three feet of my personal space. In my lifetime I've had the pleasure of caring for pet mice, a pet lizard, a pet turtle, a pet rabbit, and tanks full of freshwater tropical fish in assorted shapes and sizes. Despite my current pet-less state, I am a card-carrying animal lover. For heaven's sake— I'm a vegetarian.
So I don't really mind that much when people call themselves "pet parents" instead of "pet owners." I get it, I really do. You love your animals so much that you'd much rather refer to them as members of your family than property. It's a nice sentiment, and I'm sure that on some level your animals appreciate your acknowledgment of them as feeling beings, capable of emotions and thought.
But when pet-lovers who do not have human children go beyond the label of "pet parent," and actually start comparing the experience of caring for a pet to the experience of parenting a child, as though the two were even marginally equivalent, I start to get peeved. It's not remotely the same. It's not. It's not at all. Trust me, I know. I've done both. And while I may feel real empathy for you when you describe that time you freaked out while your dog was having surgery, it does not compare at all to the time I had to wave and smile as surgeons wheeled my infant son off to anesthesia in a steel crib-cage.
So I hereby present, for the general edification of pet parents who have not yet acquired children of the human variety:
Key Differences Between a Child and a Dog
(Substitute "cat" or "potbellied pig" for "dog" as you please.)
If you're a dog owner, and you're out of milk and you need it for the recipe you're making for dinner, you can run to the grocery store down the street without your dog.
If you are a parent of a small child and you find yourself faced with a grocery emergency, you either must find a babysitter immediately, or dress your child appropriately for the weather, take your child to out the car whether or not your child wants to go, strap your child into an appropriate restraining device, listen to your child complain about your selections on the car radio all the way to the store, take your child out of the car seat, locate a cart that actually has a working seatbelt, listen to your child whine about your not finding a kiddie car cart, listen to your child whine about having to ride in a cart, listen to your child ask whether you can buy every tenth thing you pass, load your groceries into your car and return your cart to the corral while also wrangling your child, strap your child back into the car seat, drive home, and then figure out how to get your child and the groceries out of the car at the same time.
A new puppy may wake its owners up several times a night to take it outside and use the bathroom.
A new baby may wake its mother up several times a night to CHEW ON HER BOOBS.
A new puppy may sometimes pee or vomit on the floor.
A new baby may sometimes pee or vomit IN YOUR FACE.
It can take a few months to housetrain a dog.
It can take YEARS to housetrain a child.
If you leave your dog alone in a fenced yard with a bowl of food, a bowl of water and some toys for eight hours a day while you work, you might feel a little bit guilty and worry that your pet is not getting enough stimulation.
If you leave your child alone in a fenced yard with a bowl of food, a bowl of water and some toys for eight hours a day while you work, you will be arrested.
You must take care to teach a dog that seeking out your shoes and chewing them to pieces is not an appropriate way to play.
You must take care to teach a child that playing with matches could set your entire house on fire.
If you are trying to write a blog post, and your dog won't shut up, you can put your dog out in the yard, or at least in the next room, for an hour.
If you are trying to write a blog post, and your kid won't shut up, you will feel morally obligated to figure out a way to entertain your child. You can set your kid down in front of the TV, but then you'll feel guilty, because all of the childcare experts say TV IS BAD, and besides, it might not work for long. You can tell your child to go play in his or her room, but he or she might start bouncing balls off the walls or playing a trumpet. If your child is old enough, you can tell your child to play outside, but then you will feel compelled to repeatedly check on your child to ensure that he or she has not scraped a knee, broken a limb or been kidnapped.
If your dog needed dialysis, you might consider taking out a second mortgage to pay for the procedure.
If your child needed dialysis, you would ask a surgeon whether it would be feasible to cut out one of your own kidneys and give it to the child instead.
A dog will never ask you where puppies come from.
A child will ask you where babies come from, where ice cream came from, where toilets came from, where the sky came from, where trees came from, how cars work, how light switches work, how a heart works, why the stars glow, where he or she was before birth, where people go when they die, and whether there is a God.
Owning a dog is a serious commitment. Raising a puppy to be a good dog citizen can be difficult. It can take a year or two of careful training to teach a dog to behave properly both in your own home and in the outside world, around other dogs and people. But if you do the job right, your reward will be constant companionship for years to come. And every other dog owner who sees you out with your dog will remark on what an excellent job you've done as a trainer.
Parenting a child is a serious commitment. Raising a person to be a good citizen is incredibly difficult. It can take 18-25 years of careful training to teach a human to behave properly both in your own home and in the outside world, around other people. But if you do the job right, your child will move out of your house, possibly to a different city or even a different country, and if you're lucky, he or she will call occasionally and come back to visit you on holidays. People will praise your grown child for being a good person, but few will remember to even consider, let alone mention, what an excellent job you must have done as a parent.
So I don't really mind that much when people call themselves "pet parents" instead of "pet owners." I get it, I really do. You love your animals so much that you'd much rather refer to them as members of your family than property. It's a nice sentiment, and I'm sure that on some level your animals appreciate your acknowledgment of them as feeling beings, capable of emotions and thought.
But when pet-lovers who do not have human children go beyond the label of "pet parent," and actually start comparing the experience of caring for a pet to the experience of parenting a child, as though the two were even marginally equivalent, I start to get peeved. It's not remotely the same. It's not. It's not at all. Trust me, I know. I've done both. And while I may feel real empathy for you when you describe that time you freaked out while your dog was having surgery, it does not compare at all to the time I had to wave and smile as surgeons wheeled my infant son off to anesthesia in a steel crib-cage.
So I hereby present, for the general edification of pet parents who have not yet acquired children of the human variety:
Key Differences Between a Child and a Dog
(Substitute "cat" or "potbellied pig" for "dog" as you please.)
If you're a dog owner, and you're out of milk and you need it for the recipe you're making for dinner, you can run to the grocery store down the street without your dog.
If you are a parent of a small child and you find yourself faced with a grocery emergency, you either must find a babysitter immediately, or dress your child appropriately for the weather, take your child to out the car whether or not your child wants to go, strap your child into an appropriate restraining device, listen to your child complain about your selections on the car radio all the way to the store, take your child out of the car seat, locate a cart that actually has a working seatbelt, listen to your child whine about your not finding a kiddie car cart, listen to your child whine about having to ride in a cart, listen to your child ask whether you can buy every tenth thing you pass, load your groceries into your car and return your cart to the corral while also wrangling your child, strap your child back into the car seat, drive home, and then figure out how to get your child and the groceries out of the car at the same time.
A new puppy may wake its owners up several times a night to take it outside and use the bathroom.
A new baby may wake its mother up several times a night to CHEW ON HER BOOBS.
A new puppy may sometimes pee or vomit on the floor.
A new baby may sometimes pee or vomit IN YOUR FACE.
It can take a few months to housetrain a dog.
It can take YEARS to housetrain a child.
If you leave your dog alone in a fenced yard with a bowl of food, a bowl of water and some toys for eight hours a day while you work, you might feel a little bit guilty and worry that your pet is not getting enough stimulation.
If you leave your child alone in a fenced yard with a bowl of food, a bowl of water and some toys for eight hours a day while you work, you will be arrested.
You must take care to teach a dog that seeking out your shoes and chewing them to pieces is not an appropriate way to play.
You must take care to teach a child that playing with matches could set your entire house on fire.
If you are trying to write a blog post, and your dog won't shut up, you can put your dog out in the yard, or at least in the next room, for an hour.
If you are trying to write a blog post, and your kid won't shut up, you will feel morally obligated to figure out a way to entertain your child. You can set your kid down in front of the TV, but then you'll feel guilty, because all of the childcare experts say TV IS BAD, and besides, it might not work for long. You can tell your child to go play in his or her room, but he or she might start bouncing balls off the walls or playing a trumpet. If your child is old enough, you can tell your child to play outside, but then you will feel compelled to repeatedly check on your child to ensure that he or she has not scraped a knee, broken a limb or been kidnapped.
If your dog needed dialysis, you might consider taking out a second mortgage to pay for the procedure.
If your child needed dialysis, you would ask a surgeon whether it would be feasible to cut out one of your own kidneys and give it to the child instead.
A dog will never ask you where puppies come from.
A child will ask you where babies come from, where ice cream came from, where toilets came from, where the sky came from, where trees came from, how cars work, how light switches work, how a heart works, why the stars glow, where he or she was before birth, where people go when they die, and whether there is a God.
Owning a dog is a serious commitment. Raising a puppy to be a good dog citizen can be difficult. It can take a year or two of careful training to teach a dog to behave properly both in your own home and in the outside world, around other dogs and people. But if you do the job right, your reward will be constant companionship for years to come. And every other dog owner who sees you out with your dog will remark on what an excellent job you've done as a trainer.
Parenting a child is a serious commitment. Raising a person to be a good citizen is incredibly difficult. It can take 18-25 years of careful training to teach a human to behave properly both in your own home and in the outside world, around other people. But if you do the job right, your child will move out of your house, possibly to a different city or even a different country, and if you're lucky, he or she will call occasionally and come back to visit you on holidays. People will praise your grown child for being a good person, but few will remember to even consider, let alone mention, what an excellent job you must have done as a parent.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Bag Attitude
A few days ago, I went to a Dierbergs grocery store. It was not my local Dierbergs store. I try to avoid my local Dierbergs store when I can, because my local Dierbergs store, though filled with friendly people, stocks a ridiculously limited selection of bruised and moldy produce.
(My local Schnucks has a terrible produce section too, actually. I am convinced, in fact, that both area chains send their worst produce to my neighborhood on purpose, so as to reserve the shiniest apples and least-green potatoes for their stores in places like Chesterfield and Ladue. But that's a topic for another post.)
Anyway, this was not my neighborhood Downscale Dierbergs for the Hoi Polloi, but a fancy schmancy We Have Non-Wilty Onions sort of Dierbergs store out in West County.
Outside this store, plastered neatly to the glass between the automatic doors, there is a little sign that reads: DID YOU REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR REUSABLE BAGS? On this sign is a picture of the Dierbergs brand resuable grocery bags that are available for purchase for one dollar apiece inside the store.
When I first noticed it, several weeks ago, I thought this was a kind and clever little sign. My husband and I always remember to bring our reusable shopping bags in to the grocery store now that carrying them has become a habit, but in our early days of using them, we would often forget and leave them in the car.
It's the sort of thing that makes you think that the Dierbergs grocery chain might really be taking this whole reusable bag trend seriously. And why shouldn't they? I mean, not only are reusable shopping bags vastly better for the environment than either the paper or plastic disposable kind, but they also save stores money.
Well, tell that to the checkers and baggers at Fancy Dierbergs.
I've already become accustomed to dramatic sighs and rolled eyes from disaffected checkers when I respond to "Paper or plastic?" with "Neither, thanks! I brought my own."
And baggers! Well. Nearly every time I pull the reusable bags out of the cart, it's like I'm telling a world-class pianist to play a concerto on my son's toy xylophone, or asking a master architect to design a house for me with crayons. I'd swear the slight once caused a particularly affronted bagger to put a bunch of bananas in with two cans of tomato sauce on purpose.
And the last time I went to Fancy Dierbergs was the worst time there so far. Not only did the checker roll her eyes and sigh when my husband cheerfully replied, "Neither!" Not only did the bagger look askance at us, and then cast a rather wicked glare toward our bananas before dolefully shaking out the first of our eco-friendly bags.
No, this was not the end of our punishment for showing off as environmental goody two-shoes. Once the checker finished scanning our groceries, she completely, purposefully ignored the pile of still-unused resusable bags that the bagger had not filled yet, and put all of the rest of our groceries in disposable plastic bags, leaving half our reusables empty on the counter.
Lest my gentle reader think this anti-eco-bag attitude is unique to the workers at one local grocery chain, only two days later, when we were at that Target of St. Louis Targets, The Mecca-Target — Target of South City — where, incidentally, they also sell their own brand of reusable shopping bags — our checker, upon realizing that we had brought reusable bags, refused to bag our items entirely, and demanded that my husband bag them himself.
Seriously, people. Is it that hard to put things in a slightly different kind of bag? Of a sort your own store sells in a deliberate attempt to get more people to use them?
Clearly some sort of campaign is needed to get cashiers and baggers outside of Trader Joe's and Whole Paycheck on track with this whole saving-the-planet-and-your-store's-bottom-line business.
I imagine the surest way to fix this problem is to make reusable shopping bags so entirely commonplace, so totally unremarkable, that not even the surliest teen temp store employee would bat an eye upon seeing a customer pull them out. If everyone starts using reusables, then checkers and baggers everywhere will be forced to stop silently accusing me of being a pain-in-the-ass hippie with their eyes when I whip my eco-totes out at the register.
Therefore, I am issuing this public call: if you haven't jumped on the reusable grocery bag bandwagon yet, I urge you, for my sake, please, to purchase a set immediately and use them on your very next shopping trip.
The ego you could help save may well be mine.
(But the planet you will help save will be your own. )
(My local Schnucks has a terrible produce section too, actually. I am convinced, in fact, that both area chains send their worst produce to my neighborhood on purpose, so as to reserve the shiniest apples and least-green potatoes for their stores in places like Chesterfield and Ladue. But that's a topic for another post.)
Anyway, this was not my neighborhood Downscale Dierbergs for the Hoi Polloi, but a fancy schmancy We Have Non-Wilty Onions sort of Dierbergs store out in West County.
Outside this store, plastered neatly to the glass between the automatic doors, there is a little sign that reads: DID YOU REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR REUSABLE BAGS? On this sign is a picture of the Dierbergs brand resuable grocery bags that are available for purchase for one dollar apiece inside the store.
When I first noticed it, several weeks ago, I thought this was a kind and clever little sign. My husband and I always remember to bring our reusable shopping bags in to the grocery store now that carrying them has become a habit, but in our early days of using them, we would often forget and leave them in the car.
It's the sort of thing that makes you think that the Dierbergs grocery chain might really be taking this whole reusable bag trend seriously. And why shouldn't they? I mean, not only are reusable shopping bags vastly better for the environment than either the paper or plastic disposable kind, but they also save stores money.
Well, tell that to the checkers and baggers at Fancy Dierbergs.
I've already become accustomed to dramatic sighs and rolled eyes from disaffected checkers when I respond to "Paper or plastic?" with "Neither, thanks! I brought my own."
And baggers! Well. Nearly every time I pull the reusable bags out of the cart, it's like I'm telling a world-class pianist to play a concerto on my son's toy xylophone, or asking a master architect to design a house for me with crayons. I'd swear the slight once caused a particularly affronted bagger to put a bunch of bananas in with two cans of tomato sauce on purpose.
And the last time I went to Fancy Dierbergs was the worst time there so far. Not only did the checker roll her eyes and sigh when my husband cheerfully replied, "Neither!" Not only did the bagger look askance at us, and then cast a rather wicked glare toward our bananas before dolefully shaking out the first of our eco-friendly bags.
No, this was not the end of our punishment for showing off as environmental goody two-shoes. Once the checker finished scanning our groceries, she completely, purposefully ignored the pile of still-unused resusable bags that the bagger had not filled yet, and put all of the rest of our groceries in disposable plastic bags, leaving half our reusables empty on the counter.
Lest my gentle reader think this anti-eco-bag attitude is unique to the workers at one local grocery chain, only two days later, when we were at that Target of St. Louis Targets, The Mecca-Target — Target of South City — where, incidentally, they also sell their own brand of reusable shopping bags — our checker, upon realizing that we had brought reusable bags, refused to bag our items entirely, and demanded that my husband bag them himself.
Seriously, people. Is it that hard to put things in a slightly different kind of bag? Of a sort your own store sells in a deliberate attempt to get more people to use them?
Clearly some sort of campaign is needed to get cashiers and baggers outside of Trader Joe's and Whole Paycheck on track with this whole saving-the-planet-and-your-store's-bottom-line business.
I imagine the surest way to fix this problem is to make reusable shopping bags so entirely commonplace, so totally unremarkable, that not even the surliest teen temp store employee would bat an eye upon seeing a customer pull them out. If everyone starts using reusables, then checkers and baggers everywhere will be forced to stop silently accusing me of being a pain-in-the-ass hippie with their eyes when I whip my eco-totes out at the register.
Therefore, I am issuing this public call: if you haven't jumped on the reusable grocery bag bandwagon yet, I urge you, for my sake, please, to purchase a set immediately and use them on your very next shopping trip.
The ego you could help save may well be mine.
(But the planet you will help save will be your own. )
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Ike Isn't Finished Yet
Flooding from Ike:
This is not Texas.
This is not Louisiana.
This is Florissant, Missouri, just north of St. Louis.
This is two miles from my house.
This is not Texas.
This is not Louisiana.
This is Florissant, Missouri, just north of St. Louis.
This is two miles from my house.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: The Circle of Life
CHILD: Mommy, are we meat?
MOTHER: What did you say?
CHILD: I said, are we meat?
MOTHER: Did you just ask if we were meat?
CHILD: Yes.
MOTHER: Do you mean, meat, like, for eating?
CHILD: Yeah.
MOTHER: Why would you ask that?
CHILD: Well, lions and tigers eat people sometimes, right?
MOTHER: Well, lions and tigers don't usually eat people. They usually eat zebras or antelopes or something.
CHILD: But they also eat people sometimes.
MOTHER: Well, yes, sometimes.
CHILD: So, are we meat?
MOTHER: Well, if you want to put it that way, yes. We're meat.
CHILD: So what is meat made of, exactly?
MOTHER: Meat is muscles. You know, those things that are attached to your bones, under your skin, that make your body move? Muscles? Well, animals have muscles too. And that's what people eat when they eat meat. It's animal muscles.
MOTHER: (VO, internal monologue) Please don't let him swear off chicken nuggets please don't let him swear off chicken nuggets God I know I'm a vegetarian but this kid is so damned picky if he swears off chicken nuggets I have no idea what I will feed him at restaurants PLEASE DON'T BE A HIPPIE LIKE MOM TODAY, OKAY, KID?!?!
CHILD: Animals have muscles? COOL!
MOTHER: What did you say?
CHILD: I said, are we meat?
MOTHER: Did you just ask if we were meat?
CHILD: Yes.
MOTHER: Do you mean, meat, like, for eating?
CHILD: Yeah.
MOTHER: Why would you ask that?
CHILD: Well, lions and tigers eat people sometimes, right?
MOTHER: Well, lions and tigers don't usually eat people. They usually eat zebras or antelopes or something.
CHILD: But they also eat people sometimes.
MOTHER: Well, yes, sometimes.
CHILD: So, are we meat?
MOTHER: Well, if you want to put it that way, yes. We're meat.
CHILD: So what is meat made of, exactly?
MOTHER: Meat is muscles. You know, those things that are attached to your bones, under your skin, that make your body move? Muscles? Well, animals have muscles too. And that's what people eat when they eat meat. It's animal muscles.
MOTHER: (VO, internal monologue) Please don't let him swear off chicken nuggets please don't let him swear off chicken nuggets God I know I'm a vegetarian but this kid is so damned picky if he swears off chicken nuggets I have no idea what I will feed him at restaurants PLEASE DON'T BE A HIPPIE LIKE MOM TODAY, OKAY, KID?!?!
CHILD: Animals have muscles? COOL!
Monday, August 11, 2008
Images of Breastfeeding Before the Taboo
August is Breastfeeding Awareness Month, and I've been inspired by Catherine of Her Bad Mother's recent post about receiving disapproving looks while nursing her infant son in public to pull together several early 20th century images of women breastfeeding here in North America, before the rise of formula feeding largely pushed nursing mothers out of the public eye for two generations.
The seed of this project was actually planted in my mind several months ago, when I read an article about this famous photo:
Most everyone has seen this iconic image, taken by photographer Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression as part of her work for the federal Farm Security Administration. The woman in the photo, Florence Owens Thompson, stranded by a broken-down car she was using to travel between towns looking for work, cradles her infant while two of her older children cling to her. This photograph is featured in practically every elementary school U.S. History course in the country.
But it wasn't until I'd viewed the entire series of photos taken by Dorothea Lange that day that I realized the Migrant Mother's shirt is unbuttoned.
When I saw that Lange's series included three photos of Thompson nursing her baby, it occurred to me: Not only was Thompson nursing in public, in full view of her older children and fellow campers at the site, without a blanket over her baby's head or any sort of cover, but this activity was so ordinary to her that she was willing to let a perfect stranger take her photo while she fed her baby.
Nursing in public was so normal at the time that Dorothea Lange had no qualms about asking a nursing mother she'd never met before whether she could take her photo.
And such images were so acceptable at the time that Lange turned them right in to her government employer, and they were included in the federal archives without comment.
In fact, it wasn't the last time Lange would photograph a nursing mother for the FSA:
Indeed, during the 1930s, the United States government, much like today, was very much in the business of promoting breastfeeding. Take this beautiful Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project poster:
The Library of Congress online catalog contains many wonderful examples of even earlier photographs depicting nursing mothers. In this 1910 photograph, a woman nurses her infant out in the open while hulling berries with her older children:
And the mother in this photograph, taken by photographer F. Holland Day in 1906, chose to have her portrait made as she nursed her baby:
The seed of this project was actually planted in my mind several months ago, when I read an article about this famous photo:
Most everyone has seen this iconic image, taken by photographer Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression as part of her work for the federal Farm Security Administration. The woman in the photo, Florence Owens Thompson, stranded by a broken-down car she was using to travel between towns looking for work, cradles her infant while two of her older children cling to her. This photograph is featured in practically every elementary school U.S. History course in the country.
But it wasn't until I'd viewed the entire series of photos taken by Dorothea Lange that day that I realized the Migrant Mother's shirt is unbuttoned.
When I saw that Lange's series included three photos of Thompson nursing her baby, it occurred to me: Not only was Thompson nursing in public, in full view of her older children and fellow campers at the site, without a blanket over her baby's head or any sort of cover, but this activity was so ordinary to her that she was willing to let a perfect stranger take her photo while she fed her baby.
Nursing in public was so normal at the time that Dorothea Lange had no qualms about asking a nursing mother she'd never met before whether she could take her photo.
And such images were so acceptable at the time that Lange turned them right in to her government employer, and they were included in the federal archives without comment.
In fact, it wasn't the last time Lange would photograph a nursing mother for the FSA:
Indeed, during the 1930s, the United States government, much like today, was very much in the business of promoting breastfeeding. Take this beautiful Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project poster:
The Library of Congress online catalog contains many wonderful examples of even earlier photographs depicting nursing mothers. In this 1910 photograph, a woman nurses her infant out in the open while hulling berries with her older children:
And the mother in this photograph, taken by photographer F. Holland Day in 1906, chose to have her portrait made as she nursed her baby:
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Salad Days
"I'm surrounded by plants! It's like a whole family of plants, and this is their house. And I'm in the living room."
"I can't reach the beans at the top."
"I will pick the green beans, but you can eat them, Mommy."
"You don't want to try even just one? But you planted these bean plants, kid. The plant grew the green beans for you."
"No, I don't want to try one. Nope."
"You don't want to try even just one? But you planted these bean plants, kid. The plant grew the green beans for you."
"No, I don't want to try one. Nope."
"Daddy can eat the green beans with holes in them."
Monday, July 21, 2008
Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: Bees
CHILD flutters one hand near MOTHER'S face.
CHILD : Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Bizzzzzzz. BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
MOTHER: Is that a bee?
CHILD: BUZZZZZ!
MOTHER: Oh, my goodness. Is this a nice bee or a scary bee?
CHILD: It's a nice bee.
MOTHER: Oh, that's good. So I don't have to be scared? Does it give kisses instead of stinging people?
CHILD rolls eyes.
CHILD: No. It doesn't give kisses. It pollinates flowers.
MOTHER: Oh.
CHILD: It just visited one flower, and now it's going to visit another flower. And now that flower will be pollinated. And then it grows other plants.
MOTHER: Right.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
As I Watch Everyone Freak Out About Tomatoes
I kind of wish I had planted mine a little sooner this year. I had to plant practically everything later than I wanted to, because all that crazy rain we had in May interfered with expanding my garden plot and building a new fence in a timely fashion (and also temporarily turned my garden soil to sludge, and also encouraged fungal growth and insect infestation on the few plants I did plant on time).
But, at the same time, I do feel a certain sense of satisfaction that while most Americans will be eyeing their store-bought tomatoes warily all summer even after this recall is over with, in a month or so, I'll be happily munching organically-grown, salmonella-free tomatoes out of my backyard garden without a second thought.
And if last year's tomato harvest is any indication of the success this year will bring, so will several neighbors up and down the street.
(You're welcome.)
And to all those currently suffering from tomato phobia who do not yet have a backup plan: do note that tomato plants, stakes and cages are still on sale at hardware stores and garden centers. All a tomato plant needs is a patch of dirt, lots of sun, lots of water, and something to lean on. For about $5 and a few hours of your time over the next month or two, you can have two or three plants providing you with fresh produce, oxygen, a reduced carbon footprint, and a sense of accomplishment.
Plus peace of mind.
But, at the same time, I do feel a certain sense of satisfaction that while most Americans will be eyeing their store-bought tomatoes warily all summer even after this recall is over with, in a month or so, I'll be happily munching organically-grown, salmonella-free tomatoes out of my backyard garden without a second thought.
And if last year's tomato harvest is any indication of the success this year will bring, so will several neighbors up and down the street.
(You're welcome.)
And to all those currently suffering from tomato phobia who do not yet have a backup plan: do note that tomato plants, stakes and cages are still on sale at hardware stores and garden centers. All a tomato plant needs is a patch of dirt, lots of sun, lots of water, and something to lean on. For about $5 and a few hours of your time over the next month or two, you can have two or three plants providing you with fresh produce, oxygen, a reduced carbon footprint, and a sense of accomplishment.
Plus peace of mind.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: Just Wait 'Til He Finds Out Where Chicken Nuggets Come From
At the library, MOTHER and CHILD read a book about insects together.
CHILD: Is that dragonfly eating a butterfly?
MOTHER: Actually, I think that dragonfly is eating a moth.
CHILD: But moths are like butterflies. I like moths and butterflies! That dragonfly should not eat butterflies. Why do dragonflies eat butterflies?
MOTHER: Well, lots of insects eat other insects. All sorts of animals eat other animals. That's just the way the world is. Besides, dragonflies eat lots of bugs we don't like, too. Like mosquitoes! Mosquitoes bite people, right? And dragonflies eat mosquitoes. So we should be happy when we see a dragonfly. More dragonflies means fewer mosquitoes.
CHILD: It still shouldn't eat butterflies.
Later, at home, CHILD watches as MOTHER scrubs toilet.
CHILD: Are you washing that toilet with water?
MOTHER: No. I'm cleaning it with a mixture of water and bleach.
CHILD: Why are you using bleach?
MOTHER: I am using bleach to clean the toilet because bleach kills germs.
CHILD: You mean, after you use bleach to clean the toilet, the germs will be dead?
MOTHER: Yes.
CHILD (accusingly): What germs are you killing?!?
MOTHER: E. coli, for one.
CHILD: But I like E. coli!
MOTHER: No, you don't. Really. At least, not outside of your intestines you don't.
CHILD: Hmph. You should not kill so many things.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Happy Mother's Day to Me
The wind and storms have killed four of my bean plants, nearly knocked over a young apple tree, and worsened a problem we already had with a loose gutter to the point of emergency.
And Isaac woke up this morning crying that his stomach hurt, and later spewed his breakfast all over the sofa. So far today he's been able to keep down six crackers.
So . . .
Instead of the sappy book-length combined Mother's Day/kid's fourth birthday post I'd planned to write today, I'm just going to send you here for a series of posts on what some moms I hang with want for Mother's Day.
I wish all my mama friends a Happy Mother's Day that involves getting properly pampered.
And I hope all of my readers will take a moment today to remember this day's original meaning, and pray/meditate/think strongly about bequeathing our children a future of peace.
Meanwhile I'll spend my day mopping up vomit and starting some new bean sprouts while my husband is outside on a ladder hammering on the roof in gale force winds. Wish me luck.
And Isaac woke up this morning crying that his stomach hurt, and later spewed his breakfast all over the sofa. So far today he's been able to keep down six crackers.
So . . .
Instead of the sappy book-length combined Mother's Day/kid's fourth birthday post I'd planned to write today, I'm just going to send you here for a series of posts on what some moms I hang with want for Mother's Day.
I wish all my mama friends a Happy Mother's Day that involves getting properly pampered.
And I hope all of my readers will take a moment today to remember this day's original meaning, and pray/meditate/think strongly about bequeathing our children a future of peace.
Meanwhile I'll spend my day mopping up vomit and starting some new bean sprouts while my husband is outside on a ladder hammering on the roof in gale force winds. Wish me luck.
Friday, May 02, 2008
My Victory Gardens, Part Two
Read Part One.
During my pregnancy with my son, on the verge of new motherhood, in the midst of my joy at prospect welcoming a new life, I found myself, as I think many women in that position do, more acutely aware than I ever had been before of the worst aspects of the world I would be bringing my child into, and helplessly anxious regarding my certain inadequacy as to act as a permanent shield against heartbreak and danger.
Driven by some nascent maternal desire to create an orderly, welcoming corner in an endlessly uncertain world, I started gardening in earnest during my pregnancy.
The apartment my husband and I shared at the time was tiny, and lacked a yard, but I was determined. I filled our tiny balcony with a motley collection of pots, and planted them with herbs and tomatoes.
The tomatoes didn't last long in such a confined spot, with a lack of good sunlight; after months of clinging tenuously, they succumbed to spider mites. But the herbs flourished, and soon I had a minature forest on my balcony. I was officially a gardener.
And every place we've lived thereafter, I've found a place to create a spot of green, for a boy whose fifth word was flower.
During my pregnancy with my son, on the verge of new motherhood, in the midst of my joy at prospect welcoming a new life, I found myself, as I think many women in that position do, more acutely aware than I ever had been before of the worst aspects of the world I would be bringing my child into, and helplessly anxious regarding my certain inadequacy as to act as a permanent shield against heartbreak and danger.
Driven by some nascent maternal desire to create an orderly, welcoming corner in an endlessly uncertain world, I started gardening in earnest during my pregnancy.
The apartment my husband and I shared at the time was tiny, and lacked a yard, but I was determined. I filled our tiny balcony with a motley collection of pots, and planted them with herbs and tomatoes.
The tomatoes didn't last long in such a confined spot, with a lack of good sunlight; after months of clinging tenuously, they succumbed to spider mites. But the herbs flourished, and soon I had a minature forest on my balcony. I was officially a gardener.
And every place we've lived thereafter, I've found a place to create a spot of green, for a boy whose fifth word was flower.
Friday, April 18, 2008
This Earthquake Pansy was Freaked Right the Eff Out
We interrupt this gardening series to say:
At four in the morning my husband and I were awakened by 5.2 magnitude earthquake.
At first I thought my husband had gotten up and for some reason was shaking the bed. Then, as I noticed he was still lying silent beside me, and the rocking increased, and I realized that in fact my whole house was shaking, my thought process went thusly:
This is an earthquake.
But, we don't have earthquakes here.
Well, actually, we do, sometimes, but I don't want to think about that because that makes this even more scary.
Could it be something else? Like a gas explosion or something in a nearby neighborhood?
No, this is definitely an earthquake.
And then my husband sat up and said, "This is an earthquake!"
Just as I was priming to jump out of bed and run to my son's room to take him outside or under a doorway or something, the earthquake stopped.
The kid slept through the whole thing.
Meanwhile, I couldn't sleep for another hour. I just lay in bed with my eyes open, reminding myself over and over again that the big earthquakes are supposed to come first and any shocks after that are supposed to be minor.
And before any of my California readers mock me, note that this Midwesterner faces down house-flattening thunderstorms, roaring tornadoes and rushing flash floods on a regular basis without batting an eye. But an earthquake? That's just NOT NATURAL.
(Except when it is. But let's not remind me of that. Okay?)
At four in the morning my husband and I were awakened by 5.2 magnitude earthquake.
At first I thought my husband had gotten up and for some reason was shaking the bed. Then, as I noticed he was still lying silent beside me, and the rocking increased, and I realized that in fact my whole house was shaking, my thought process went thusly:
This is an earthquake.
But, we don't have earthquakes here.
Well, actually, we do, sometimes, but I don't want to think about that because that makes this even more scary.
Could it be something else? Like a gas explosion or something in a nearby neighborhood?
No, this is definitely an earthquake.
And then my husband sat up and said, "This is an earthquake!"
Just as I was priming to jump out of bed and run to my son's room to take him outside or under a doorway or something, the earthquake stopped.
The kid slept through the whole thing.
Meanwhile, I couldn't sleep for another hour. I just lay in bed with my eyes open, reminding myself over and over again that the big earthquakes are supposed to come first and any shocks after that are supposed to be minor.
And before any of my California readers mock me, note that this Midwesterner faces down house-flattening thunderstorms, roaring tornadoes and rushing flash floods on a regular basis without batting an eye. But an earthquake? That's just NOT NATURAL.
(Except when it is. But let's not remind me of that. Okay?)
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Someone Call Mike Huckabee
And tell him there's come good eatin' in my back yard if only he'll bring his own BB gun and a BBQ grill.
In one week, our friendly neighborhood squirrels, in some sort of spring-induced frenzy, have chewed off HALF of one of our trashcan lids (which, mind you, already had a convenient squirrel access hole that had been chewed last season), and gnawed a four-inch by three-inch hole through tough, quarter-inch thick acrylic to get to about a quarter cup of seed inside a bird feeder (seed which they then apparently chose not to eat, preferring to dump it on the ground).
Apparently, they're just not getting enough plastic in their diet.
They weren't nearly this bad last year. Any suggestions?
In one week, our friendly neighborhood squirrels, in some sort of spring-induced frenzy, have chewed off HALF of one of our trashcan lids (which, mind you, already had a convenient squirrel access hole that had been chewed last season), and gnawed a four-inch by three-inch hole through tough, quarter-inch thick acrylic to get to about a quarter cup of seed inside a bird feeder (seed which they then apparently chose not to eat, preferring to dump it on the ground).
Apparently, they're just not getting enough plastic in their diet.
They weren't nearly this bad last year. Any suggestions?
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Why We Do It
Last year, when the leaves fell, you
worried; you
tried to put them back on the trees,
so concerned that the pretty wooden creatures
might be ill,
that something in the world might have turned
wrong.
This year when I raked leaves into a big, big pile
you waded through them, buried to your waist;
you jumped ,and landed with a crunch, and jumped again
and tossed crisp red and brown confetti in the air
for hours straight,
and laughed, and laughed,
as though a pile of leaves were the best thing
ever in the world,
and I laughed too, and didn’t feel the blisters on my hands
from so much raking.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Deja Vu
Read this.
Switch summer to winter; switch record highs to single digit lows; keep the whole half a million homes in my city without power, some possibly for days, thing.
Oh, and mine is one of them.
Again.
See you when the electric company decides my apartment is as important as the video store across the street . . .
Switch summer to winter; switch record highs to single digit lows; keep the whole half a million homes in my city without power, some possibly for days, thing.
Oh, and mine is one of them.
Again.
See you when the electric company decides my apartment is as important as the video store across the street . . .
Thursday, November 30, 2006
This Is Not Snow:
Click on the picture and look at the big version.
This is tiny balls of solid ice.
They are falling now outside my apartment. They bounce when they hit the ground.
(What do you call this? Is this sleet? Miniature hail? Any lurking meteorologists out there to enlighten me?)
The parking lot to my apartment was flooded with about an inch of water this morning from heavy rain. It now looks like a skating rink. Covered in tiny ball bearings made out of ice.
My husband is still at work.
*sigh*
******************
Edited to add: my husband is home and not dead. The car is also fine. Because I was not riding in it, obviously.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
The Way Things Work
This evening after dinner, Isaac started begging me to go outside.
"It's almost dark outside already," I told him, showing him through the window. "We'll have to play outside tomorrow when it's daytime."
He sighed in resignation and hung his head. Suddenly, he perked up, and asked, "Mommy, where does the sun go?"
My first inclination, honestly, was just to tell him the sun was going to bed. As he would be shortly.
I mean, how do you explain the reason for sunsets to someone with minimal language skills and only the most basic, mostly subconscious understanding of things like spatial relationships and geometry? Who doesn't have the foggiest idea he lives on a giant (how big is giant?) spherical (what's a sphere?) object called a planet (what's that mean?) that spins around as it hurtles through outer space (where's outer space?) around a much, much more giant flaming (huh? why? what lit it?) ball of nuclear (what?) fusion?
So, yeah, I was on the point of making up a clever one-sentence fairy tale (or, okay, let's face it, stealing one made up by some mother of antiquity whose precocious two-year-old decided to ask her the same flabbergasting question), when I thought about a conversation I had earlier today with Andrea about how amazed I've been at the volume of convenient fabrications that have come out of my mouth since I became a parent
("If you don't eat that turkey right now, I'm going to eat it all myself!" Says the vegetarian mother.
"Thomas and Percy are too sleepy to play. They want to go night-night in their cozy plastic box now."
"Mommy can't stay next to your bed reading to you for another hour and a half because she has to go potty right now. Right now! I can't wait! Sorry! See ya later! Good night!"
"Turkey? Oh, no. That's not turkey. It's white ham!"),
and then Andrea asked if I'd read any of the discussion quasi-recently over at The Mom Trap about whether deceiving children for convenience's sake undermines a parent's credibility, and I replied that that when it comes to getting my child to eat I am willing to say just about ANYTHING
("Thomas and Percy LOVE to eat turkey. Didn't they tell you?")
but that I had in fact read that discussion, and the whole "never lie" idea was an interesting theory, really.
So, when Isaac asked me where the sun goes, in a moment of guilt over my no-good dirty lying parenting ways, I grabbed a big blue exercise ball and an enormous flashlight and attempted to demonstrate the basics of planetary motion for a pre-schooler.
I don't think he understood a word of it.
But afterward, he kept pointing the flashlight at the ceiling and saying ecstatically, "Look Mommy! I made the sun!"
Which really cheered him up after the whole not going outside deal.
"It's almost dark outside already," I told him, showing him through the window. "We'll have to play outside tomorrow when it's daytime."
He sighed in resignation and hung his head. Suddenly, he perked up, and asked, "Mommy, where does the sun go?"
My first inclination, honestly, was just to tell him the sun was going to bed. As he would be shortly.
I mean, how do you explain the reason for sunsets to someone with minimal language skills and only the most basic, mostly subconscious understanding of things like spatial relationships and geometry? Who doesn't have the foggiest idea he lives on a giant (how big is giant?) spherical (what's a sphere?) object called a planet (what's that mean?) that spins around as it hurtles through outer space (where's outer space?) around a much, much more giant flaming (huh? why? what lit it?) ball of nuclear (what?) fusion?
So, yeah, I was on the point of making up a clever one-sentence fairy tale (or, okay, let's face it, stealing one made up by some mother of antiquity whose precocious two-year-old decided to ask her the same flabbergasting question), when I thought about a conversation I had earlier today with Andrea about how amazed I've been at the volume of convenient fabrications that have come out of my mouth since I became a parent
("If you don't eat that turkey right now, I'm going to eat it all myself!" Says the vegetarian mother.
"Thomas and Percy are too sleepy to play. They want to go night-night in their cozy plastic box now."
"Mommy can't stay next to your bed reading to you for another hour and a half because she has to go potty right now. Right now! I can't wait! Sorry! See ya later! Good night!"
"Turkey? Oh, no. That's not turkey. It's white ham!"),
and then Andrea asked if I'd read any of the discussion quasi-recently over at The Mom Trap about whether deceiving children for convenience's sake undermines a parent's credibility, and I replied that that when it comes to getting my child to eat I am willing to say just about ANYTHING
("Thomas and Percy LOVE to eat turkey. Didn't they tell you?")
but that I had in fact read that discussion, and the whole "never lie" idea was an interesting theory, really.
So, when Isaac asked me where the sun goes, in a moment of guilt over my no-good dirty lying parenting ways, I grabbed a big blue exercise ball and an enormous flashlight and attempted to demonstrate the basics of planetary motion for a pre-schooler.
I don't think he understood a word of it.
But afterward, he kept pointing the flashlight at the ceiling and saying ecstatically, "Look Mommy! I made the sun!"
Which really cheered him up after the whole not going outside deal.
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