FOOD GROUPS
There are moments in time that I wish I could freeze, beautiful glimpses of simplicity and laughter that I wish I could hold onto forever. These days they happen most often at my dinner table, just my husband and me and our two growing men.
At 16 and 18 our boys are nearing the end of their years at home, at least within the parent/child structure that we’ve always known. Perhaps it’s because I’m so close to the emptying of the hour glass that I recognize the sands of time passing and long to keep so many of them trapped within my grasp.
But while I can’t stop them, I can recognize them.
And I find them absolutely beautiful.
Lately our dinnertime conversations have revolved around challenging our youngest’s assertion that all foods can be categorized into one of three groups - soup, salad or sandwich.
Enchiladas? Sandwich. Teriyaki chicken and rice? Salad. Breakfast cereal? Soup. Only lasagna seems to span multiple categories, with Garfield the Cat’s perfectly square stack earning the designation of sandwich and my homemade, sinks-across-the-plate-once-it’s-dished version recognized as a salad.
Each night a new food is presented, our youngest confidently announces its category, and since he’s the one making the rules, we’ve come to accept that we can’t really prove him wrong.
Soup, salad, sandwich - the mystery of the food groups solved.
It’s the laughter in their eyes that I will miss once these moments are gone, once their faces no longer grace my table. Caught in the void between fully grown and fully child, life is bringing big questions their way - do they have what it takes to be a man, will they be able to stand strong as they walk into what life asks of them?
But in the midst of the swirl of young adulthood I still see the boy in them, the lightness and the wonder, the inside jokes they refuse to explain to their dad and me, the bizarrely random ‘what ifs’ that can only be considered by a mind unburdened by the weight of adult responsibility.
It is a beautiful season and I am cherishing every moment as it comes.
But it was not always this way.
Our table has seen its share of tense moments and I’ll be the first to declare that the teenage years are absolutely the best, once you get past the first couple of them. But perhaps it is the darkness of the night that makes the sunrise so breathtakingly beautiful. Perhaps the moments that draw us to tears make the moments of laughter all that more powerful.
There was a time I would have been inclined to pretend the rough times didn’t happen, or at least down-play them with a layer of forced gratitude. But these days I’m more interested in seeing the story in its fullness - allowing the tears when they must fall, releasing the laughter when it takes its turn to rise.
Like any well-written story, ours will have highs and lows, darker colors that weave in and out of the brighter ones we so prefer. But given their proper care, I see that each moment has a place on the canvas of our lives, mixing together to create a work of art no single tone alone could ever accomplish.
I hope I am brave as I watch the masterpiece unfold, embracing and breathing through all that life brings. But for now I laugh…and keep trying to come up with foods that cannot be categorized as a soup, salad or sandwich.