On the table in front of me sat a piece of chocolate cake. My 70 year-old grandmother stood across the table insisting, “Finish your food, then you can have cake.”
It took forever for me to get to eat that cake. Years later, the cake fades against the impression left by my usually placid grandmother’s hard insistence.
Saturday, it was not Grandma but Momma insisting, “You have to finish that little bit of food that I put on your plate, Katie. You have six minutes to be done if you want ice cream like everyone else.” Five year-old Katie and Momma only remained at the table. Everyone else had eaten and left.
Katie reluctantly pecked away at her food. She knew she could not win this battle with her mother. She would eat those couple teaspoons of vegetables, potatoes and meat. She had already had the same battle earlier in the day, with a new food. “You can try a couple bites,” her mother insisted.
“Oh I thought it was one bite for every year,” I smiled at Katie. “So if you have five bites, then Eli has to try fourteen bites of a new food. And Grandpa! Wel, he would have to take 81 bites before he could leave the table. Can you imagine how tiny his bites would be? I bet you are glad you only have to take a couple bites.”
Katie just looked at me.
If she had been a teenager, I am sure she would have rolled her eyes at me. She could not see the sense of eating food she did not like or had ever tasted. As a child she does not understand why adults insist kids try new foods.
Lectures about it all being part of growing up fall on deaf ears. Parents aim to teach their children to eat healthy foods. They hope the lesson continues into adulthood. They want their children to spontaneously try new foods or at least take a couple polite “no, thank you” bites.
A recent rerun of Law and Order had a short vignette on the same theme. A young man sat in the holding cell refusing to discuss what he knew about his uncle’s role in a murder. From childhood his guardian uncle used his visual memory skill to win at gambling. To that end the uncle kept the nephew dependent, immature and at his beck and call.
Detective Robert Goren hands the nephew a napkin, “Take this and tuck it in.”
The young man obeys.
Detective Goren opens a container of hot chicken parmesan. The adult-kid wrinkles his nose at the prepared dish, “I don’t want that. I don’t like it.”
“How do you know? Have you ever tried it?” Goren insists.
The accused shakes his head, “I want a sandwich and chips.”
Goren asked, “do you ever eat a hot meal?”
“I eat hot dogs and hamburgers.”
“Your uncle has kept you a child. He wants you to be a child, dependent on him. Following his orders. He doesn’t want you to grow up. He doesn’t want you to try new things. To think. To see what is happening.”
The lesson at the table is not simply about eating new foods. It is about trying new experiences, venturing beyond the playpen into the world. A concept beyond understanding for my childhood self and soon-to-be kindergartner Katie.
Momma’s and Grandma’s insistence extends beyond preschool elementary. At that age, we don’t want to learn to eat those foods. We don’t care about consuming a variety of healthy foods. Fortunately the adults who love us insist, so we venture away from the familiar to discover new foods, ideas and experiences.