“Are we having THAT for dinner?” Liam asks with disdain as he watches me slide another zucchini down the mandolin. “Yes.” I simply retort, looking down to double-check that it is in fact the zucchini shredding, and not my own heart. I love eating, even making good food, but more for the aesthetic pleasure and community it cultivates, and right now that “aesthetic” part of our family eating might be seen as — how shall I say it? “Pearls before swine”? I suppose this is the on-going plight of the modern parent, fighting to feed their children’s bodies, souls, and spirits with quality, while simultaneously the kids crave and yearn for the artificial crap. Liam must have noticed. “I mean, no offense, mom. I just don’t like my veggies — you know — in odd form.” “You mean in a form where you don’t know they’re vegetables?” He smiles. No offense. Where did he learn that rhetorical cheat — the sweet disclaimer before the blow? I laugh, half-expecting this eight year old man-boy to grow facial hair before my eyes, and my heart begins bind together again. A funny and fragile thing, our hearts. As Blythe said to me one day while I tried to empathize with one of her day’s griefs, “I’m sorry?” Her head swayed from shoulder to shoulder, as she sobbed “That’s all you can say? I’m sorry?” Yes. Sometimes that’s all we can say. I hugged her until she was comforted, and then we laughed.
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Yes, our hearts are funny things. And the constant battle we wage (for ourselves and our children) with consumerism and crappy food – O, Lord, show us mercy.