And Now
I’m watching Robin eat squash soup, all by himself, with a spoon. I tried to get him just to drink it from a cup, but he wants to use the spoon. It’s crazy messy, but I know that it’s good practice for him, and that it’s toddler nature to want to do things the way his parents do. He’s no fool: he can see perfectly well that we eat our soup with spoons, and he’s made it his job to figure out how to do that too.
I actually love watching his care and concentration as he navigates the soup to his mouth. And more than that: there’s something deeply, intensely rewarding in watching my son slurp up his vitamin-packed, all-organic, all-local, cooked-from-scratch squash soup. It’s like with every bite he takes my hindbrain purrs, good mom, good mom. Partly because food = love in my brain, but even more particularly because it’s squash soup, and I associate squash with my mom, so it’s like: Yes! I’m doing it right!
Weird the kind of deep buttons food can push for us, huh? Well, at least the mess is pretty localized, so it’ll be easy enough to mop up later.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:51 am
I feel the same way about dancing to folk music with Silas. I associate folk with my mom, so it gives me a deep sense of completion — the cycle of mommyhood and all!
November 9th, 2009 at 7:52 am
I just noticed that I used the word “deep” once and you used it twice — this mothering experience is nothing if not deep. It definitely happens deep in the hindbrain, doesn’t it?
November 10th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Definitely!