From the Archives: Cube by Cube
A piece about a mother's love through food, written and shared for the first time around mother's day 10 years ago
Hi friends. I’ve been working on something for you. Actually, I’ve been working on a lot of different projects, and I can’t wait to share more. However, the new stuff isn’t quite ready yet. So in the meantime, to get back into posting more regularly, today I am sharing a piece of writing from my archives.
This piece was written 10 years ago for a creative writing class I took while studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. The prompt was to write about a mother’s love through food, assigned a few weeks before Mother’s Day. I wrote this piece from the perspective of my mom, after spending a few hours on the phone with her discussing a wide variety of experiences and beliefs and memories related to the topic.
This was also the first piece of personal writing I ever shared with the public, by reading it on stage at a storytelling event in Perugia later that month. It was an invigorating experience, and no doubt gave me the courage to continue finding ways to share my writing, including by launching this blog almost two years ago.
In honor of Mother’s Day (a few days ago) and the upcoming anniversary of Unbound, please enjoy the following. Can’t wait to share more soon.
<3
Cube by Cube
If you cut it into little cubes, they will eat it. These little people will take their little fingers and bore the toothpicks like mighty spears. Before eating they will stack the cubes, disperse the cubes, color-coordinate the cubes, arrange the cubes into larger shapes. Occasionally they will peer at each other’s creations, but mainly they will focus on their own. This is where their originality starts to unfold. They will look at me and ask for more cubes, because I am their mother, and I will give them more, because they are my children, and this is how I discover who they are: cube by cube.
***
Before there were cubes there was mush. You were supposed to give them the vegetables first. You would start with the greens, and at the end of the meal you would finish with a taste of something sweet, like apricot or plum, to see if they like it. With each new flavor came discovery for all of us. They began discovering the many flavors this world has to offer, and I began discovering, slowly, the personalities of the people behind those little pairs of eyes. I would watch as the first taste of sweet potato arose suspicion in the boy, elation in the girl—neither of whom had the words to express these reactions: only little faces, little eyes, and little gestures that did the talking for them. The third child was still growing in my belly, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the taste of sweet potato would mean to him.
***
Now that the days of mush and cubes are over, we have a rule in the house: The One Bite Rule. The kids are now old enough to start making their own choices at meals; they know the flavors they like, as well as the flavors they don’t, and by now I know their palates as well. But still, there are discoveries to be made.
The One Bite Rule is meant to provoke these discoveries. The rule, essentially self-explanatory, is that the kids must always try at least one bite of the food they are given before deciding whether or not they like it. Too often children will avoid certain foods based on appearance or smell alone, but not my kids—I want them to learn how to experience it all.
Although the rule was instated to encourage open-mindedness, as the months go by I discover it also promotes the opposite: it has become a test of wills in our house—a weapon thrown back and forth between the most stubborn of our members.
Almost two hours my youngest son has been planted at the dinner table; almost two hours my husband has been screaming at him to take a bite, one bite, of his green beans. The whole family is now involved.
Just eat it Matthew!
We want this to stop!
Quit screaming at him!
We are all sick of this!
Eat! the fucking! green bean!
My husband has forbidden my son to leave the table and go to bed until he takes one bite. It no longer has anything to do with the green beans.
There is hatred. There are tears. There is immobility on both sides. I am tempted to chew the green beans myself and spit them into his mouth, the way a mother bird feeds her young: to help it survive. I am almost at my breaking point when finally, by the grace of the vegetable god, my son takes a bite of the green beans.
Silence.
Relief.
Vomit.
My son stands up within five seconds of his singular bite and violently throws up all over the dinner table, because it isn’t truly a warzone until blood has been shed. Happy? he glares at his father. He found a loophole. He is six years old and he has won his first war.
The discovery never stops.
***
The kids are in high school now—a freshman, sophomore, and junior to be exact. This means that for the past 12 years, five times a week, I have prepared three sack lunches with Capri Suns and individualized snacks so that my kids don’t have to wait in the cafeteria line for a tray of industrialized chicken nuggets. I cut their homemade sandwiches diagonally, into triangles, because the pieces are easier to eat that way. I wonder if they notice.
They are teenagers, and at times they can be so mean—to me, to each other, to themselves. Often we get into fights; they yell at me and I yell back, but when I am really mad at them I change the direction of the knife: I cut their homemade sandwiches vertically, into rectangles. I wonder if they notice.
***
The kids are in college now—a freshman, sophomore, and junior to be exact. Now with more time to myself, I’ve taken up some projects around the house. Today I was cleaning the garage, and found a box of old photo albums. In one of the pictures my daughter is wearing her favorite dress: a light blue checker-patterned A-line covered with little watermelon slices. She is five years old. Looking at the photo I remember, not that I had ever forgotten, one of my favorite of her quirks from when she was young.
Whenever she would wear something with fruits or vegetables on it, she had this desire to share it with the people around her. When she knew a person well, or if she could see that they were happy, or perhaps if they were in need of being cheered up, she would take her little fingers and pluck the food right off the printed fabric and try to put it in their mouth. She was feeding them, nurturing the people she loved. I would intentionally dress her in food-printed fabrics just to watch it happen.
I bring some of the photos back inside and hang them on the wall by our breakfast table, where I can see them from the kitchen. If I am honest with myself, I am eating less these days. With only one mouth to feed, sometimes I wonder what’s the point? But after hanging up the photos, I decide to make myself a sandwich. I even use the good mustard this time. After wiping down the blade, I cut the sandwich diagonally, into triangles, and take a bite.
Memories of two decade’s worth of flavors and fights and laughter and love flood my senses all at once, and it is almost too much to bear. I take the knife before me and do something I haven’t done in years: I cut the sandwich into cubes.
Now, it’s time to rediscover myself.