Sac Foodies

These were not your run-of-the-mill beets. These were glorious things, procured fresh from the farmer’s market and turned into the sweet and tangy beings that beets are meant to be. But, on my three-year old’s dinner plate they were cause for freaking out.

Rewind some twenty-odd years. I was utterly devastated that Aunt Tress would ruin perfectly good scrambled eggs with the egregious addition of green peppers. Or, that my mom – my own flesh and blood – loved me so little she would put onions into <insert name of any old dish here.>

Saddled with these memories, I scooped the beet off his plate and ate it myself thinking the kid really did have it all wrong. But, then there was the trouble of the beet juice. It was now on his pork chop. And, rather than see his little world crash, I wiped the beet juice from his plate. Whew. Peace was restored at the dinner table mere seconds before his father flipped his ever-loving lid.

I wondered at that moment, if he would remember this episode in his young life. I wonder if he knows that everyday I catch glimpses of myself in him. I wonder if he would ever learn to love beets. I smiled as I already knew the most likely answer…to this day, I still won’t eat an onion.

By Shelly Kessen