The Table Has Turned

One of my rules is NOT to eat from my kids' plates. I have learned not to eat the parentheses of pork tenderloin or the apostrophes of pasta. If I did, I would still be wearing my maternity jeans. However, I now have a son who eats as much as I do. Manny will look over my shoulder and ask for a bite then he'll ask for another, and then my growing boy will edge his way into my lap and I will hand it over and watch him devour it. I have made rounds of of garlic-fried rice, an extra omelette, another peanut-butter apple. But when I am about to tuck into my dinner, I do not want to schlep the goose pot back to the table. I want a minute to eat in peace.

My parents used to take us to a Chinese buffet and they would just revel in the competitive eating. It was glorious to them, providing abundance and watching their children eat their fill. A primal privilege. But also growing up with immigrant-parents, there was a kind of food boundary-- the shrimp paste, the fermented fish sauce, ox-tail, tripe. These were things my parents ate and we kids, did not. Did they not offer it? Did they not expect our American-slang palates to enjoy them? My thinking now is, they did not want to share. I now get it, the private plate just for me, warmed just so at 150 degrees, the sane solitude of eating something no one else will ask for.