Add Children. Blend Carefully Into Family.

Talk about blended families. Our family tree has more exes than a Tic Tac Toe tournament. At 2:00 in the afternoon on holiday weekends all the children automatically rotate parents from force of habit. This weekend I found myself seated at dinner next to an entertaining young man who was engaged in a fork joust in an effort to keep his creamed corn from touching his potato salad.

“Well, hello.” I’m nothing if not a sparkling conversationalist.

The fork executed a remarkable thrust and parry to save yet another food item from corn domination. “Yo.”

Limited verbal motivation. Uncombed hair. Aversion to cohabitation of vegetables. I hate that nagging feeling that you’ve seen someone before and can’t remember where.

“And who do you belong to?” I really should write this stuff down.

“You. I’m your first-born male child. I inherit your kingdom, such as it is.”

“What’s your name?”

“You told me not to tell anybody that doesn’t say the code word.”

“What’s the code word?”

“Nice trick. You warned me you might try that.”

I liked him better when he was poking holes in the entrée.

I squinted critically and turned his face side to side with my palm. “You don’t look like me.”

“Yet one more thing to be thankful for.”

I paused to consider. Wit coupled with a side order of sarcasm. A single sterling family trait does not make him an heir to my fortune in frozen Girl Scout cookies and unrecycled grocery bags.

“So what’s your name?”

“Nice try, Mom.”

“If I’m your Mom, tell me something personal that only I would know.”

“You hide leftover Easter candy in your underwear drawer, you can’t reach the Tupperware bowls on the second shelf, and you cry during the end of Secondhand Lions whether you see the first half of the movie or not.”

A few lucky guesses does not equal a DNA match.

“And what happened on Friday,” I queried, conjuring up memories of Family Scrabble Night.

He swallowed the last bite of uncontaminated potato salad and guzzled a half gallon of iced tea without stopping for breath. “Friday was allowance day. You owe me five dollars.”

Anybody with that kind of money memory has my blood in his veins.

Now how can I get him to tell me the family password?

Maybe I can buy a vowel.



Son One? Who Knows?

 



Food Fight

My previous husband, the Man Who Salts Everything, was basic in his tastes. He wouldn’t touch tuna with a ten-foot fishing pole and industrial strength test line. He liked beef, well-done, with a side order of sodium. His ideal woman was Lot’s wife.

This particular husband, The Defendant, didn’t believe in frills such as spaghetti sauce, salad dressing, or any vegetable that didn’t get stuck in your teeth. Through a careful catch and release program, I attempted to educate his palette. We eventually settled on two vegetables, corn and broccoli, two fruits, apples and bananas, and any red meat, provided the red was banished in flames hot enough to give the sun a smart case of prickly heat. This kind of selection makes it hard to get your money’s worth in a buffet restaurant. Unless they had sirloin on tap, we lost money. Over the course of our thirteen years, I managed to introduce a few delicacies. He has a finer appreciation of Oscar Meyer as a result of our years together.

By comparison I will eat anything that doesn’t require a greater output of energy to prepare than it takes to consume. Therefore, it never occurred to me that I would have children with food issues. That sort of thing happens to other people, loners or postal workers with a grudge. But it happened to me, so it could happen to anyone who is careless with entrees that come in boxes festooned with the words “Ready in Minutes!” or “Turn Your Meat Into a Meal!” I'm a sadder but wiser girl. Exclamation points should not constitute a major component of the food pyramid.

Son One will eat any food item that does not come into physical contact with another food item during growth, processing, or preparation. Except for beans. Beans are unacceptable for consumption at any time. If he were in a comatose state heading toward the light and I touched a bean to his lips, he would return to the Land of the Leftovers long enough to call emergency services and report me for abuse. Most other food is satisfactory, excepting, of course, the standard internal organs, as long as no other food compromises its integrity by intersecting its boundaries. Once the corn touches the potatoes, you may as well call the dog in to lick the plates, because supper is over. Son One’s favorite food group is any carbohydrate that is available in bulk quantities.

Son Two eats only attractive food. Grill marks and stray condiments are unacceptable. Any crust-bearing foods, cheese varieties that are unwelcome at the pizza buffet, or items swathed in juices recycled for extended durations in a crock pot are unacceptable at mealtime. Vegetables, while handy for use in slingshot weaponry, are not welcome offerings, except for the fluffy treetop parts of the broccoli which may be served in alternating months that contain an R. Son Two has grown to teenagerhood on sweetened cereal, cheese pizza, and filet mignon that drips blood like an open wound. Artificial flavoring is his favorite food group.

The latest Surgeon General reports stress that family bonds grow as a result of mealtimes spent together. Odds are the Surgeon General never had to cut the crust off the biscuits while making sure the gravy didn’t create an alternate route through the potatoes. Frankly, that’s more bondage than I can stand.

Teachers R Us

I recently experienced an awesome and somewhat startling revelation. And it doesn’t even have anything to do with how to chop onions without crying or the best way to clean a soiled linen tablecloth if you’ve had the bright idea that it would be educational to let the children eat at the adult table, or even a new and economical way to cook Brussels sprouts so that everyone likes them.
This is an actual revelation from life experience. Not the kind of life experience that other people have and submit to women’s magazines for fifty dollars, although if I had a really great Brussels sprouts recipe that would actually cause people to eat them instead of hide them under the potatoes, I would certainly be willing to accept fifty dollars for it. My revelation is a great discovery that came about when I was talking with my niece who is an actual elementary school teacher. Upon the occasion when a child in her class had an unexpected and thunderous attack of gas in the classroom, she, the teacher, wanted to laugh. She did NOT laugh (out loud), but it took an episode of strict self-discipline and positive reinforcement to maintain her composure.
So it turns out that teachers are people just like you and me. Well, maybe not like me, because I’m still convinced that they can add numbers in their heads and figure out the answers to story problems without looking up the answers.
If one example isn’t proof enough, listen to this. I work at a church in a job which, unwise as it may seem, I am expected to do math. I am responsible for writing people’s paychecks and for paying taxes to the government, which is a pretty tricky procedure owing to the fact that the government is very particular in believing that you should pay them the right amount. Oh, they don’t really mind if you go overboard and send them buckets of gold, but short them by a doubloon or two and they’ll charge you interest.
Anyway, the first thing my employer did after he witnessed me thrashing my way through frightening things like bank reconciliations and trial balances; well the first thing he did after he regained consciousness, was to provide a helper, a mentor if you will, to guide my little ship through the deep and storm tossed waters of fund accounting. And this helper was, if you please, a teacher, and not just any old teacher, but the wisest owl of the lot—a college professor who instructs others in the art accounting! And can you imagine what this most venerable of all educators said the very first time he saw me perched on the edge of my chair at the computer, attacking the evil forces of fund accounting with a shredded bank statement in one hand and a computer mouse in the other? He sat right down and said, “Let’s make a back-up just in case we make a mistake.” A mistake! He allowed for a possibility that, even as a team (And this is a man who is smart enough to grow tomatoes and corn and other yummy things without having to give them all to overzealous crows or neighbors.), we could conceivably forget to carry an integer and get in trouble with the IRS (I Require Supervision) people. I expected the heavens to open up a send down a dove that very second. He sat with me patiently and kindly day after day and, even though he developed a disturbing habit of slamming his right foot to the floor like a driving instructor trying to stop a runaway car, he never gave me a failing grade on a day’s work. And he brought me tomatoes.
And if that kind of compassion isn’t proof that teachers are human, there’s not an equation in the world that would do the trick. But I can’t help but wonder if he has a good Brussels sprouts recipe.