Where Did You Find Me, Mommy?

A couple of weeks ago, two of my children told me separately that they did not want to attend the maturation program at the school.

When the second one said it, I was dumbfounded. "Don't you want to know what the other kids will know?" I asked.

This was not the problem I expected to deal with. In my head, I was wondering whose kids these were. Answer: their shy father's. Back when, I was curious.

Still, it seemed unlikely that both of them would have that reaction. I asked my daughter, "Have you been scaring your brother about the maturation program?"

One shoulder came up while a silly look came over her face.

So I talked to my son. A little bit. About his body and how it would be changing. (I had already talked to his sister over a year ago.) Then, looking into his beautiful, innocent, brown eyes, I veered off a bit into discussing what being a man really means. What being a father really means. I talked about working hard, responsibility, treating women fairly and with respect. Being there for his eventual children. Following the example of his father, grandfather, and uncles.

Which is not an altogether bad maturation pre-talk after all, I guess.

I completely agree with having "The Talk" with my kids. I agree that they need to get their knowledge and values from their parents. And information--it shouldn't all come from dubious or out-of-the-home sources. I do not want to be as reticent as my mother was.

But, when you're looking into the face and eyes of your child--that child whose whole existence you have spent protecting and shielding--and you're doing it really just to be ahead of some school's arbitrary schedule and not because this child came to you needing to know--it can feel a lot like you're shattering that child's innocence. So, it's hard.

Ideally, this information should come as the child is ready for it. Ideally, age-appropriate answers should be given when the child asks questions and clearly wants to and is ready to know.

The best talk like this happened when one of my children was two or three years old. He looked up at me and asked, "Mommy, where did you find me?" Clearly, he could not remember how we had met.

First, I laughed at his cuteness, and, second, I was stymied for a minute, but then I answered honestly, "I found you in my tummy. You were just a little tiny baby in there starting to grow, and I was so happy when I found out you were in there." I explained that babies grow in a special place in their mother's tummies until they are big enough to be born. That was all he needed to know at the time.

The next time he brought it up, I repeated, then elaborated, "And where did I find your sister?"

He looked at me sideways to see if I was joking, then said, "In your nose."

Apparently, more talks will need to be had.

Which matches what I told my ten-year-old son before his terrifying maturation program: growing up is a process. You're not a child one day and an adult the next. Not in any way.

Which is why I guess I believe there should not be just one "The Talk." There should be several--at different times, answering different questions, giving different information, with different levels of formality, in different places.

It, like everything else in life, should be a circular, ever-widening-and-deepening-each-time-you-go-around process.

Slashing Spice Cake with Pear Sauce to Fit

After dinner Sunday, my kids asked for dessert.

I felt deflated and defeated. I was trying to go for three weeks without sugar. In fact, the night before, I had avoided four kinds of cookies, several kinds of pop, and birthday cake at a family party. I had been strong then, but, since then, I had been fasting, and I wasn't sure I could last in the face of temptation.

"We have lots of things to use for dessert," my husband said, encouragingly. I looked over to him, wondering what he was talking about. "Peaches, pears, strawberries. . ." he started to list.

I smiled to myself. This is another example of a major difference between Paul and me. My list of things to make dessert with would not be all fruit--it would be things like chocolate, caramel, whipped cream. . . .

It used to be that I made a spice cake with pear sauce for my family. I think it must have been two years ago--I don't think I made it at all last summer, when I was trying hard to lose weight until The Day I Got Old. My family started clamoring for spice cake with pear sauce. They weren't really clamoring, by any dictionary definition of the word, but they wanted it.

I went into my bedroom.

When I came out, I started to make spice cake with pear sauce. I asked Paul if he knew where the recipe for the spice cake I'd used was. He brought out a big green loose-leaf binder, full to the point of explosion with recipes. A couple of them are apparently mine. He helped me find the spice cake recipe I had used back in 2007 or 2008. "Did it have raisins?" I asked, surprised.

"I don't know. Don't think so."

I didn't, either, but I put raisins in, anyway. What i didn't put in was sugar. Or flour. I was brave. I was bold. I thought I should probably put in half sugar and half Splenda (which is basically sugar with no calories and doesn't usually bake as well as sugar does), so it would turn out all right--and half whole wheat and half white flour, but I didn't. I used only Splenda! I used only whole wheat flour! I wanted to be able to eat some when I was done and not just stare at it the way I had the cookies the night before.

I dug up the lemon sauce recipe I had modified for the pear sauce. "Did I double this?" I asked Paul.

"I don't know."

"Did I pare the pears? Or leave the skins on?"

"Don't remember."

"Did I use two, or three?"

"Dunno."

Clearly, I was on my own.

So while my son whose name starts with P made up "pare a pair of pears" jokes in the living room, I made that spice cake with pear sauce, and I made it good. I made it edible on my low-carb diet. I made the pear sauce with Splenda, too. And it was good. Paul said it was fine, but didn't eat any more than one serving. Although he did empty the cookie jars of the two kinds of cookies I had had to make for another family party on Monday. So sweet, that man.

After dessert, I picked up a reference book and figured out how many calories were in the two versions. Answer: 454 per serving with sugar and flour; 250 per serving with Splenda and whole wheat flour.

I felt omnipotent.