starting with today

I am suffering that ridiculous paralysis that sets in when it is my turn in a correspondence to speak, to share, and yet too much time has passed. However can I report on all that has happened? However can I write the letter that I should write, the kind of excellent and honest dispatch that will make up for my undue silence?

The silence continues, the pressure mounts to make up for it, and sometimes it takes a radical move to break the cycle. So I am returning to the blog with a post that does not attempt any poetic summation of the last two momentous weeks. Rather, I'm here to tell you about pudding.

This is pudding unlike you've ever had before! Edith sent this to me, originally found in an old Mothering magazine. All you late nursers, lovers of alternative medicine, and women who cannot bear to cut your sons' long curly locks will - I suspect - go for this hook, line, and sinker. Skeptics, lower those raised eyebrows and just try it!

1 ripe avocado
1/2 to 1 ripe banana (depending on how much you like banana)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 Tbs. (or more) coconut oil
1 tsp. vanilla

Put it in your blender or mash it with a fork. Oh my, it is decadent. I am eating some right now. As I sat wondering what to tell you about, and how to say it, I looked down into my bowl and realized I had to start out exactly where I was. With pudding. Gabriel loves it, but Frances spied me scooping the avocado into the bowl so she has thus far avoided it.

While we're talking food, I should also tell you about the book I picked up on a whim at the library earlier this week. I've been avoiding this book because it seems lame to take parenting advice of any sort from Jerry Seinfeld's wife. But being the food-loving mother of a food-fearing five year old, I'm vulnerable. I took it home to read about how to sneak squash and spinach into Frances' limited diet. This morning I made banana peanut butter muffins featuring a healthy dose of pureed cauliflower. Gabriel ate four in rapid succession. Frances sniffed the air as they came out of the oven and declared them weird.

I think she caved eventually and ate one. But the real problem is that she is an outrageously curious and excellent reader, and sat next to me as I flipped through the book at the library. Her face was positively grim and shadowy with suspicion this morning, even though she hadn't seen me assembling the ingredients.

Did you make these with a recipe from THAT book, Mama?

(Damn, damn!) Yes.  Don't they look yummy?

No.

Oh well. But I will say I am a bit taken by the premise (slipping vegetable purees into everything from hot chocolate to scrambled eggs) and will give it a few more tries. Magic green sauce belongs to this family of kid cookery. That works pretty darn well. If anyone else goes the extra mile and slips magic veggies secretly into meals, will you share with the rest of us?

Finally, in other food-related news, Gabriel ate his first hot dog on Tuesday night. I keep saying that I'm not raising vegetarian children, that they can eat whatever they enjoy (within reason), but I have to admit it pained me a little as I slipped him pieces covered in ketchup and relish at the end-of-the-year picnic for Frances' preschool.

I grow increasingly uncomfortable with factory-farmed meat. I always was, but my opposition used to conveniently float out the window at picnics, family gatherings, and dinner parties. Now I find my gut, my conscience, that little angel dressed in white - whoever it is that lives inside me and pipes up when I'm doing something that doesn't feel right - that presence hollers at me when it comes to eating factory-farmed animals in polite society. The little twist inside is sharper these days.

I really felt it during my training week at Aisling Retreat Center, where a kind and beautiful elderly nun named Sister Cecelia made all our meals. She was perplexed and confused by my eating habits, but tried with love and sincerity to accommodate them. One evening she pulled me aside and pointed to a small plate featuring two petite burgers neatly tucked into white buns and explained she'd made turkey burgers in addition to the hamburgers. Won't you like those better, dear?

Did I mention she is Irish and speaks with a quiet, musical accent? I knew in that moment that the twist inside me when faced with those turkey burgers was not quite as painful as the twist I felt during the split second that I considered rejecting her gift.

But did I really need to offer that hot dog to Gabriel? He is an innocent, dear boy. I was the one who introduced the idea and fetched it for him. It was driven by that tiresome part of me that is stuck on what one does. Kids eat hot dogs, right? Why should I be so uptight?? Come on Frances and Gabriel, we're not a weird family, get out there and do what kids do! Here, let me help! Watch me saunter over to the grill and ask for a hot dog for my toddler as if I do this sort of this every dang day.

Lesson learned? When a 78 year old nun spends a good portion of her afternoon preparing food for me, I'll graciously accept it. At a neighborhood picnic, I'll bring the tofu pups. We're a weird family! I'm not quite ready to shout it from the rooftops, but I am hoping to learn to claim our singularity with more confidence. And I am hoping that a growing attunement to those inner twists will help me to honor them. To go with my gut.

p.s. I have to share some wet kid pictures from the past few days...and I suspect I'll tell you about them more in a future post. I'm in the process of securing some more daytime babysitting so my evenings will be freed up from work and open for the simple delights of reading, movie-watching, conversation with my dear husband, and of course, blogging!

I just loaded many pictures into the computer and found a series that Mike took of the children at the zoo during my training week. How strange to see them out in the world having a fantastic time, while I was meditating many miles away.

Birthday party sprinkler FUN. It was a blast, truly.

Here I am herding cats. I mean, organizing a wet relay race. The five year olds were ready and willing to follow rules and belong to teams, but the toddlers in attendance had other ideas.