They say you always wish on your children offspring who mess with them the same way they messed with you. In that case, I wish upon both my children picky eaters. In memory of the hours spent separating sauce from pasta, cheese from pizza, yolk from white, and crust from bread, I wouldn’t mind if they each spent just one year of their future children’s childhoods devising menus like a short order cook in a nuthouse. Let them see if they can please their youngsters sitting there with arms crossed and heads shaking “Nooooo!” while threatening to puke if there’s mayonnaise anywhere on the table.
It wasn’t easy. But it’s hard to believe now sitting across from them in a restaurant with their plates heaped full of calamari, salmon in dill sauce, and spinach salad topped with big wedges of tomato. Back in the day I could have wasted either one of them just saying the word ‘tomato’. Like the friend of mine who used to threaten her 8-year-old when he whined during our phone calls: “Watch it, mister, or you’re gonna find yourself at Annie Sez!” Which meant hours of him sitting outside a dressing room while his mom tried on jeans and wailed about her weight. That kid shut up faster than a high-interest bank.
Now in their twenties, my children act oblivious when I tell them how impossible they were at the dinner table. They look at me blankly as I describe the plates of apple slices, half a hard-boiled egg white, and handful of peanuts I put down in front of them because that’s all they would eat. “Really?” they ask, surprised. “We just thought we were poor.” You were POOR EATERS, I answer as they drizzle basil-flavored olive oil onto their bread plates and surrounding diners look at me like I’m deranged. As if to prove them right, Daughter polishes off her lamb shank and Son asks if I’m going to finish the other half of my sweet potato. I hand it across wondering when he started eating orange food.
And of course neither of them has ingested fast food in years. I eat KFC in the closet while they prepare sauces and braise leeks. Son asked for mixing bowls for Hannukah. Daughter walks a dozen blocks to the Whole Foods in Chelsea or the weekend farmer’s market at Union Square. They ask me why I always used to serve Pillsbury Toaster Strudel for breakfast. I tell them calmly that if I didn’t they wouldn’t be here today. They’d have starved to death. And that just makes a mother look bad.
I’m reminded of my days as a lunchtime aide at the kids’ elementary school. For a few terms it was my job to troll the cafeteria and urge students to take another bite of that sandwich before hitting the Oreos. One boy brought the most perfectly prepared lunch every day – sandwich, fruit, juice box, granola bar – and every day just as faithfully he threw it all out without eating a thing. One day out of exasperation I told him I was going to tell his mother what he was doing. He looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Oh, don’t do that. She really likes making it.”
I decided to take a chance anyway and approached the mom one afternoon at dismissal time. I started off by saying I was the noon hour aide and maybe I shouldn’t tell her this, but her son threw away his entire lunch every day without eating so much as a morsel. She looked at me impassively and said, “You’re right. You really shouldn’t tell me.” I said then forget I mentioned it and she did. She went right on preparing the perfect lunch every morning for the school garbage can. And the thing is, I understood perfectly.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos wish you and yours a Delicious Holiday
santas in the city
Columbia’s a cappella group Lock and Key
city lights
sunrise on the upper east side
Merry Christmas and a Figgy Pudding to All!