This doesn’t feel like Progress

June 15, 2016

 

 

I scheduled the appointment with the nutritionist. Heard about corn cereals and the rats in France with the enormous tumors. Don’t google it. It will be forever burned in your memory (like mine) and I feel a lance of guilt pierce my heart every time I even think of reaching for a GMO non organic cereal. Guilt is a mighty beast.

She told me about peanut butter. And the rats. And how because it is in the ground that even if it is organic it still has something. Something with a bacteria maybe. Whatever it is, it’s not good. Which is what positive people say. We say it isn’t good. We don’t say it’s bad. We define bad by it’s relationship to good.  A little insight I share. And it’s the tree nuts I want because they are up high. No rats. No whatever the other thing was. And we consume as a family 10 PB sandwichs per week. 2 BP takers, one consistent ham and cheese. 2 children x 5 days x 1 per day. On a running around weekend it could be more. Which is most weekends. x 52 weeks per year and that is 520 single servings of rat infested cancer causing bacteria ridden sandwichs And hearing her tell me this I am running numbers in my head, a motherly human calculator, and I can’t. I have this responsibility thing and even though the rational world will hear this and shrug, it’s me, not you, and I can’t.

And withdraw is a mighty beast. And the critics refused almond butter. Accepted sunflower butter which now has listeria scares, only to later refuse that as well. Even though it cost me 12.99 for the jar. And so I turned to a healthy version of nutella, if there is a healthy version, otherwise known as chocolate icing for my oldest, and butter rolls for my youngest. Which is what she had in her lunch every day when she was preschool. Because she didn’t like peanut butter, or cheese, or ham and cheese, or anything except a buttered roll. Bread and water ladies, I pack my daughter bread and water.

And I bought the glass water bottles. To be healthy. Only one broke. Exploded actually in a backpack. Grenade style and my daughter lifted every chard, sliced open her finger which left a perfectly formed divot in the middle of her finger. A round sphere so deep there was nothing to stitch, what do you do with a hole in your finger. I could see tendons. Which will forever be burned in my memory.

I pack the lunch now with a plastic PBA free water bottle, and a buttered roll. A protein of nuts replaced by dairy. Replacing good fats with not good fats. And realize that progress isn’t always a straight road. Maybe it is more like climbing a tree, moving from limb to limb to get to the top, where the branches open and you can see the wide expanse of house tops and tree tops. Maybe we need to move sideways to move up. And life is a lattice and not a ladder. And the journey is the destination.

 

 

Written by Mary Kate O’Malley

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Category: Random and Fun
Tags: food, humor, labeling, mommy blog, mommy life, non GMO, organic, parenting |