Play With Your Food

I’m glad he said these words.  I needed to hear them.  Even though I lived with him and saw him working in our kitchen and in a laboratory, saw how much he loved his work, I wouldn’t have let my kids play with their food.  I’m not the kind.  After all, it goes against all the mommy advice I have ever learned, what about table manners and etiquette.  It also goes against my freakishly obsessive nature.  Playing with their food might mean creating a mess or mixing foods that don’t go together.

Still, every time we sit down to eat, his voice is in my head, “Let the kids play with their food.”  And I watch as my daughter builds a house out of orange slices and my son creates an alligator mouth from his peanut butter waffle.  I know that my counters will be sticky and their hands more so, I can clean these.  But watching them use their imaginations to tell stories, be creative in just one more way, this simple way, with food, well, that’s pretty special.  Having a father who thought it was important that his grandchildren play with their food, that’s really special.