Deseret News, Wed., January 13-14, 1993

EVERYONE HAS OWN IDEA OF ULTIMATE COMFORT FOOD

“The best thing about bad weather is how good it makes soup taste,” I told my boy one stormy day as he reluctantly sat down to what I considered the ultimate comfort food—a steaming bowl of vegetables with bits of beef and broth.

Apparently, the weather hadn’t gotten bad enough to convince the world’s pickiest eater, who also happens to be my 15-year-old son, to lift his spoon.

“So that’s why you start peeling carrots every time it rains!” he said in a voice as dry as the untouched crackers on his plate.  “So you can save the runoff in the barrel to make soup.”

If there hadn’t been the slightest chance he was just kidding, I would have suggested he try an alternate menu, like bread and water, for the rest of his life.

Instead, I just smiled and gave him kitchen duty for a month.  Unfortunately, he didn’t appreciate my generosity.  

“When was the last time you ate watermelon?” he had to ask. 

If I have an Achilles’ heel where food is concerned it’s watermelon.  Once during my childhood, when my school’s lunchroom monitor told me I couldn’t leave the cafeteria until I’d finished my fruit cup, I threw up.

“OK!” I surrendered.  “I’ll never make soup again.  Next time it storms, I’ll serve cold cuts with ice cream, and we’ll all sit around eating ‘til our lips turn blue.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” he countered.  “Next time it storms, let’s go out for pizza.  That way you won’t have to spend the day stewing over what to cook.”

“Ha!” I croaked in honor of his pun.  And then, I smiled for real. It’s pretty hard to stay mad at a kid who’s so considerate.  “How come it’s taken me so long to figure out that, from your point of view, pizza is the ultimate comfort food?”

“Because it isn’t!” he said with a voice as smooth as olive oil.  “From my point of view, the ultimate comfort food is watermelon.  “But I’d never try to make you eat something you couldn’t stand!

To my credit, I did learn to like watermelon later in life!

POLITICAL JARGON JUST CHILD’S PLAY

“Power is not a substitute for reason,” said Rep. Newt Ginrich, R-Ga, in the opening rounds of GOP squabble over President Reagan’s lobby for a $98.9 billion tax hike to ease federal budget deficits. Bedrock conservatives don’t want it, and the word is out that a good old-fashioned donnybrook threatens to muddy up the House floor, as some of the President’s old friends, including former Reagan political adviser Lyn Nofziger and former Reagan domestic policy adviser Martin Anderson square off against those opposed to the administration’s plan.

 “Donnybrook!” Now there’s a word! The first time I ever heard it used in reference to government, I thought they were talking about a new senator. My 8-year-old daughter and I were busily engaged in the serious business of icing a chocolate mayonnaise cake at the time, and as the 6 o-clock news pumped out the latest political palpitations, and I came to realize that what I know about politics would just about fill a measuring cup. 

“The Republicans are the ones with the long noses and big ears,” I told my little girl in reply to her question about our country’s two-party system. “The Democrats,” I further explained, “are the ones with the short noses and big ears.” “With all those big ears, Mommy, how come no one ever listens?” 

My darling child had put the whole country’s problems in a nutshell. “Oh, they do,” I demurred, “about as good as you do, when I ask you to help me clean the house. “Do they help clean their house? she asked. “I suppose some of them do,” I could only hope.

 “The ones who don’t...are they the dirty politicians?"   I wondered about that one.“Some of them are pretty good about sweeping things under the rug,” I had to say. 

My protege was deep in thought. “What would happen if they crossed a Democrat with a Republican? Would they get a Democran or a Republicat?” she finally asked. I said I hoped a Republicat, since I’ve always been partial to kittens.  

“Maybe a lion kind of cat!” My daughter’s eyes lit up. 

“Hmm, the King of Beasts!” I could see this regal political hybrid, pacing back and forth across the Senate floor—a feline solution to the nation’s political polarity. Our conversation had lifted me to an intellectual high.

 In the next moment, I’d resolved the problem of the tax hike, too. “All us good Americans could use the tax cut money we received in July to pay the tax hike Reagan has proposed,” I said out loud. My daughter wiped the chocolate frosting from her chin.

 

Will That First Teacher Realize the Worth of Small Son?

 

Rain or Shine

LAKESIDE REVIEW

5 September 1984

Matthew started school yesterday. I watched him saunter—almost swagger down the hall.  One small hand swung confidently against his stiff new jeans, while the other hand’s knuckles tightened on a pencil box so new you could still see the gummy place where the price tag had been.

Matt-Matt’s freshly cut hair, the color of ripe wheat, bounced jauntily on the crown of his head, as he maintained a safe distance ahead of me, but not so far away that his clear, blue eyes couldn’t focus on my face whenever he looked back over his shoulder.

This, he did regularly, if somewhat self-consciously, before jostling against some nearby kid as though to create a diversion from those apprehensive backwards glances.

When Matthew finally reached the kindergarten room, my thoughts raced ahead to contemplate the teacher waiting outside the door to turn the page of a new chapter in my small child’s life.

A thousand questions quarreled with the peaceful state of mind I had sought to affect as an example to my son. 

Will this teacher notice how vulnerable Matt’s mouth and chin are when his eyes sparkle with pseudo macho mischief?

Could she ever guess how much the tough little kid who likes to flex his muscles in public loves his well-worn plush leopard in private?

Will she understand that the biggest tease in in her class, the one who doesn’t mind tugging on a little girl’s braids, would shrink to ever pull a puppy’s tail.

Can she sense that a small boy who seems so self-contained would love to have a hug from time to time?

Upon reaching the long-awaited destination of his first five  years, Matthew took his place behind a table low enough to stub your toe on.  Forcing an ear-to-ear  grin from across his teeth, he gazed with bravado at the brand-new woman in his life.

I hoped she saw the momentary wobble of his chin.