Out of the Box

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Recipes spilling out on counterMy daughter Ally says I’m a hoarder. She may have a point. As I search the cupboards for a spanakopita recipe gone missing, hundreds of loose clippings cascade to the floor.

Not one is from my mother. She’s bequeathed many wonderful things, but heirloom recipes and a deft hand in the kitchen are not among them. What tumbled from my mother’s cupboards were boxes of Cheez-Its and Ring-Dings. Mostly they brought private relief from the black hole of suburban housewifery. But every afternoon when I came home from school, my mother shared her stash while I shared the ins and outs of the day. I loved licking the salty orange dust from my fingertips and how the glazed chocolate shell yielded to the cake’s soft interior.

Since my mother’s cooking skills were limited to sprinkling onion soup mix atop a cheap cut of beef, most of my childhood meals came from a box. We had almost no cookbooks. Just an ancient Fannie Farmer and a pristine Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the latter a gift from my father laden with hope and rebuke. One prized paperback summed up my mother’s culinary philosophy: Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book.

But I loved to cook, or at least to experiment, and my mother loved to indulge my whims. Perhaps hoping to someday palm off the task of feeding us night after unending night, she never minded the spills on the counter or the mess of bowls in the sink. My first made-from-scratch cake had the heft and taste of a hockey puck. Yet my mother and I delighted in the rainbow frosting magically created from just four squeeze bottles of food coloring. By high school, I had graduated to fancy-dress dinner parties for my friends featuring Boeuf Bourguignon. Julia Child was at last put to good use. Still mastering the art of baking, I also served an inedible Apple Harvest Cake as cloying as marshmallow fluff.

I have been collecting recipes ever since, and am renowned for my cakes–chocolate-espresso tortes, lemon bundts that pucker the mouth into permanent ecstasy, an apple-walnut cake that lays to rest the ghastly sweet ghost of its predecessor.

My daughter and I have continued the ritual of sharing gossip and snacks in the kitchen, with one crucial difference. From the time Ally could stand, she’s been folding wet ingredients into dry, absorbing my preference for food made from scratch. Once she even pulverized Cheez-Its, reconstituted the crumbs with water, and baked the soggy mass in a quest for home-baked goodness. When Ally left for college, I hand-copied her favorite recipes into a scrapbook. Like my mother, I enjoy the fruits of my encouragement, and of Ally’s labor: she gladly cooks for us every time she’s home.

Ally has a lot of recipes to choose from: The Joy of Cooking competes for shelf space with whole volumes dedicated to soup, chicken, pasta, chocolate, every world cuisine and passing food fad. Weight Watchers and vegetarian cookbooks stand ready in case I ever follow through on my good intentions.

But the books are nothing compared to big manila envelopes stuffed with recipes culled from magazines, newspapers, and the mothers of ex-boyfriends. So I’ve hired my daughter, who’s looking to earn some extra cash between college and a real job, to tame the mess. True to her generation, Ally seeks a technological fix.

“Haven’t you heard of the internet?” she asks.

I have. But online browsing can’t compete with sitting down surrounded by stacks of books and clippings to plan a dinner party, a week’s menus, or how to use the odds and ends at the back of the fridge.

Ally is right, though: It’s gotten out of hand. So I set her up with scissors, double-stick tape, and notebooks to organize my recipes, most of which I’ve never tried. Like every hoarder, I hold out hope that someday I’ll put everything to use.

“When are you ever going to make Buche de Noel with Meringue Mushrooms?” Ally inquires.

I swear that this year will be different from Christmases past. But Ally lacks faith that my plans for show-stopper desserts will no longer fall victim to last-minute wrapping. Nor does she appreciate the value of multiples. Otherwise, she wouldn’t bother asking, “Do you really need another recipe for dal?”

Hmmm. Letting go is hard, but I suppose not. One for the “Discard” pile.

“How many different kinds of chocolate cake do you plan to bake?” Ally persists.

All of them. Chocolate has its own special “Keep” pile.

Now I get why hoarders go psychotic when well-intentioned relatives trick them into leaving the house, then move in with dumpsters. Since Ally clearly cannot be trusted with sorting, I must discern my own treasure from trash.

Sifting through 40 years’ worth of recipes is like an archeological dig. Excavating the layers uncovers a civilization once heedless of time and cholesterol—1 cup heavy cream, ½ pound grated cheddar, ½ pound ham, just to make a noodle casserole. Or Duck Gallantine, which involves boning a duck and rendering fat for many hours. I have rendered a lot of fat in my life, and most of it is on my hips. I prefer a faster route, via scrumptious chocolate layer bars.

The dig also reveals an era of unexecuted dinner parties that would have led to insurrection by Downton Abbey’s kitchen staff: Roast Saddle of Veal with Mushroom Sauce for 12; Ham Braised in Port with Brown-Sugar Crust for 20. My early browsing exposes a period of sheer fantasy: enough time and money, matching china and crystal, and a couple of Masterpiece cooks on loan from BBC.

This by-gone epoch is overlaid by the reality of young family life, with lots of hidden-vegetable recipes. Next comes the modern era of chicken every which way and grains previously known only to ancient Incas.

Finally I am ready to turn over the clippings that have escaped the recycling bin. Ally sets to work as I hover nearby to make sure she doesn’t jettison my multiple cheesecake recipes.

Now we are cooking! In no time at all, Ally has brought order from chaos. She is also salivating. “Let’s make Portobello Bourguignon!” she exclaims, echoing my youthful pick with a vegetarian version sure to win over Julia Child.

And so we do, working side by side, peeling, chopping, sharing the ins and outs of the day. I imagine my mother, Ring Ding in one hand, saluting us with a box of Cheez-Its in the other.

(Originally published in skirt! Magazine)

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What are your family’s food and cooking traditions? How do you organize your recipes? Any favorites you’d care to share? (I’ve cheated and found some links for some of the drool-worthy ones I mention, but of course they are missing my tweaks and all the stains on the page. And alas, I could not find Tart’s chocolate-espresso torte recipe, so you will have to come paw through my tattered index cards.)

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Getting Out the Vote

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Absentee BallotsMy husband and I are political junkies—or at least we were until we had to stop following the news to preserve our mental health. Still, we consider voting a duty, not a privilege. So when our eldest daughter turned 18 in 2006, I wrapped her birthday presents in voter registration forms.

Even then, back in the days when hope was ascendant and our fervor less dampened, voting was complicated. For Emma’s first election, we sat down together at the dining room table piled high with Voter Guides, newspaper clippings and endorsements, and a small forest’s worth of glossy political ads. The lesson commenced.

“It’s pretty impossible to be well informed about all the issues and candidates,” I instructed. “So one strategy is to follow the recommendations of people you trust. Or compare all the editorial endorsements of various newspapers and average them out.”

“Then there’s plenty of well-intended but poorly drafted initiatives. You have to decide what message you want to send or whether to vote purely on the merits. It’s perfectly reasonable to vote your ideals, but it’s also a good strategy to vote pragmatically. Sometimes, to be honest, I vote against whoever is using the most FULL CAPS in the voter information pamphlet—never trust someone who only knows how to shout.”

“This is really depressing,” sighed Emma, staring at hundreds of blank bubbles on her vote-by-mail ballot.

When our daughter Ally turned 18 three years later, she was less interested in my voter education drill. In fact, she registered in her college town, beyond the reach of my knowledge of local issues. Still, a mother can dream of eternal influence, so I sent Ally my trusted friend’s carefully researched election recommendations on statewide and federal choices.  I assumed she’d be thankful for my guidance.

Wrong again.

“I really don’t appreciate you sending me that,” declared Ally. “I’m trying to be my own person.”

I apologized immediately, adding how proud I was that she was following the issues and figuring things out for herself.

“How are you staying informed?” I ventured.

Ally replied, “I’m just going to vote according to this mailer I got from the Democratic Party.”

So much for Ally’s declaration of independence.

Always the child who suffered most from Post-Traumatic-Dinner-Table-Political-Rants, Ally has now removed herself even farther from our impassioned discussions and maternal interference, to Barcelona. So Jerry Brown and the Democrats will have to make do without her vote.

Emma, though, wanted me to send her mail-in ballot to Brooklyn, where she’s been temporarily sojourning as a starving artist. I am happy to report that she’s been calling for election advice.

Trouble is, now that hope has curdled, I have been shirking my civic responsibilities by being less well-informed. Of course I’ll vote, but I hadn’t quite gotten around to the research phase. So I suggested a couple of sources to check out, then gave the only reliable advice I could:

“Remember, the ballot must ARRIVE by the end of election day, not just be postmarked. So be sure to mail it in time. And please–let us know what you find out, so you can tell us how to vote.”

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What is your method of being an informed voter? How have you talked to your kids about politics and voting? Do they follow your lead? 

 

Filling in the Blanks, Turning the Pages

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Tonight I will fill in the last blank space for Year Two in my line-a-day-five-year memory book that my friend Mary gave me soon after I was diagnosed with cancer. Tomorrow I will begin Year Three.

I like to look at what was happening in the previous year’s entry (now it will be years’ entries!) Mostly they’re pretty mundane: “Hiked Baldy and went to work.” “ Skyped with the kids.”  “Saw Gone Girl [disappointing].” “Saw Kill the Messenger [two thumbs up].”   “Slept poorly.” “ On track with my eating.”  “Not on track with my eating.”  “Wrote.” “Avoided writing.”

Sometimes, though, when I read the previous year’s entry, I’m jolted by the poignancy of all the mundane moments that make a life, and how they do not last forever. Three days ago, for instance, I read that last year on the same date, I had lunch with a colleague. We met to share our experiences about what it was like to be therapists who were working while undergoing chemotherapy for an article I was writing, “The Myth of the Intact Healer.” Seven months out of treatment and with an excellent prognosis, I had just come out of my wig. My colleague admired my curls, then told me about her collection of wigs—the ones she would never come out of because she was never going to be done with cancer until it had finished her off.  She was as beautiful and full of life as all the times I’d seen her throughout the years.  I remembered our lunch as I read last year’s entry for October 25: “Had lunch with S.” That was the last time I saw my colleague—she died last month.

It brings me up short, this turning of the pages, remembering, filling in the blanks, wondering how many more blanks I’ll get to fill in, whether I will complete one or two or ten line-a-day-five-year memory books.

And now, on this day of the calendar’s cusp, as I move from Year Two to Year Three, I’ve opened an email from a woman I haven’t yet met named Marcy. Marcy lives in Portland, and has been living with Stage 4 ovarian cancer for the last four years. (She blogs about it at livinglydyingly.com) A long-time organizer and activist, Marcy believes in the power of community, building it through ever-expanding connections.concentric circles in rippling water I came to know her through being on one of the farther concentric circles that ripple out from her center. Marcy’s request for help with transportation and housing to pursue cutting edge treatment around the country traveled through many networks to reach my friend’s activist daughter, who forwarded it to her mother, who forwarded it to me.

I haven’t yet been able to take Marcy to the airport when she’s needed me to, and she hasn’t yet needed our extra bed. But we have struck up a lovely email correspondence. In the one I opened today, Marcy included a link to something she’s written for Yes! Magazine. It’s called “What I’ve Learned About Living from Dying of Cancer.” You should read it yourself, because as you can see from my confession in earlier paragraphs, my summary certainly won’t do it justice. But here is one of my favorite parts:

I sought out other women living with a pink slip from life and discovered how hard it is for us to find each other. Medical privacy laws don’t help. Advocacy groups are often Web- or hospital-based, but not everyone flourishes in those settings. Eventually I created my own support circle of other women with terminal cancer. The group is called “It’s a Dying Shame,” and the outreach flyer states, “Our goal is to explore the rich and peculiar territory of facing our own deaths. Together we can mine the humor, strangeness, and beauty of a life turned upside down. Join us for tea down the rabbit hole.”

My cancer scare notwithstanding, I do not pretend to have the vaguest idea of what it is like to have gotten a pink slip from life, and I am glad for the ignorance, glad that I have the luxury of skirting that rabbit hole for now.

Still, when I turn the page on another year tonight, I will think of my colleague, of Marcy, of the many good and bad movies I have seen and hope to see more of. I will try to honor each day’s moments, and how precious and mundane and fleeting they are, whether they stop before they can be recorded in the next entry, or go on and on and on.

From Boyhood to Adulthood, Time Passes

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Hourglass

“We happen upon ourselves when nothing much happens to us, and we are transformed in the process.”  (Anthony Lane’s review of Boyhood in The New Yorker, July 21, 2014)

In Richard Linklater’s wonderful film, Boyhood, we see a boy and his family grow up throughout 12 years of real rather than simulated aging. Time itself is one of the lead actors. Toward the end of the film, the boy, Mason, talks with a young woman he meets on his first day of college. “Seize the moment,” they conclude about the adage, has it backwards. Actually, “the moment seizes you.”

Every one of Boyhood’s ­­164 minutes seized me through its assemblage of ordinary moments that constitute life. At my urging, my 23- and 26-year-old daughters went to see the film. They liked it, but both said it was more for middle-aged people than young ones. This strikes me as true, but why?

Perhaps a fundamental difference between how my daughters and I perceived the film stems from the fundamental difference between how children and adults perceive time. For kids, time passes slowly, excruciatingly or deliciously so. Adults, on the other hand, want to stop if not reverse the clock. They have a consciousness of aging that children lack. Linklater simultaneously captures a child’s moment-by-moment experience and the palpable nostalgic ache of adulthood. Longing for what is lost to time itself adds an extra dimension for the viewer old enough to have moved midway through time’s trajectory.

During one of Boyhood’s earliest scenes, Mason’s mother hands him a can of paint and asks him to cover up stray marks in preparation for moving. Mason whites out the lines on the door jamb marking his and his sister’s heights—measurements that are a yearly ritual for any family. We don’t know how six-year-old Mason experiences the moment. Perhaps he is eager to complete a task for his beleaguered mother, perhaps he’s annoyed that his sister chats on the phone while he works, perhaps he’s sad about the friends he’s about to leave behind. But surely the child feels the disruption of the present moment, not retrospective longing as his paintbrush obliterates the record of growth spurts.

Such nostalgia is the purview of adult viewers, if not Mason’s mother, who is mostly too harried and pragmatic to feel its pull until she is on the brink of the empty nest. That’s when time’s passage wallops her. As she despairingly imagines it, everything’s over in the blink of an eye,

For much of the time Linklater was writing and filming, “Always Now” was his working title. But the film might also be called “Looking Backward.” Again, it’s the difference in perspective between young and old, and between the young and old viewer. One unfolds to new possibilities while the other feels the sharp poignancy of what is already gone.

Maybe that’s why when young people get married, “Sunrise, Sunset” makes it onto the band’s playlist not for the newlyweds, but for their parents. And why Boyhood makes it onto my, but not my daughters’, all-time-favorites list.

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How has your perspective on time changed with age? And if you’ve seen Boyhood, what did you think of it? If you have kids who saw it, what did they think?

 

Picture Worth a Thousand Words

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My-Other-ExI know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But one look at the cover photo of My Other Ex: Women’s True Stories of Leaving and Losing Friends tells me that editors Jessica Smock and Stephanie Sprenger of The HerStories Project are on the right track.

Literally. The photo is of two women walking side by side on railroad tracks. Arms outstretched, their fingers touch—but barely. They have come to a switch, a tricky junction where two parallel tracks diverge. The necessary curvature allowing for an additional direction means the women must move a little farther apart. Each walks precariously on the narrow track edges; one looks as if she is about to lose her balance. Will they be able to negotiate this change in the tracks safely?

Or will they get zapped by the third rail of female friendships—envy, competition, aggression, differentiation, betrayal, conflict, conflict-avoidance, to name just a few? All the not-so-nice realities that beset girls and women. When we inevitably encounter such things with no language to talk about them, our closest friendships often crash and burn in fiery ruptures. Or end not with a bang, but with a whimper that leaves us wondering what happened.

Either way, it’s like a punch in the gut. My friendship break-ups have knocked the wind out of me for years. I obsess, I brood, I go over and over what went wrong. I hate her, I miss her. I can’t move on. And almost every woman I know has experienced her own particular version of such heartbreak.

We bear our grief in shameful silence, though. The hyper-celebration of gal pals just makes you feel worse when your friendship turns pallid or your friend turns on you.

At long last, My Other Ex breaks through the silence and sheds some light on why ruptures are so common.  I can’t wait to delve beyond the picture into the many thousands of words these women write about friendships derailed.

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Have you ever experienced rupture with a female friend? What was it like? Lessons learned?

 

Invasion of the Childhood Snatchers

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Kids in tent with laptopWhile perusing the newspaper and sipping a latte at my favorite coffeehouse the other day, I was aghast to come across a full-page Comcast ad. (Thanks to the miracle of iPhones and picmonkey.com, you can view the image above.) As you can see, it shows two kids in a tent, glued to a glowing laptop screen. The bold heading floating in the night sky reads:

WHAT’S POSSIBLE WHEN WI-FI IS IN MORE PLACES?

Hovering like some creepy cyber miasma just above the tent are the words:

FRONT ROW IN THE BACKYARD

What is wrong with this picture?

Let me be clear. First, I am not a fan of camping, and have been known to long for creature comforts (like beds, let alone wi-fi) when forced to spend time in a tent. Second, I am not above the judicious use of TV, DVDs, and other more modern forms of screen bribery when raising children, particularly before dinner during what a friend refers to as the Suicide Hour. Many a meal has appeared on the table, and many a death has been prevented, thanks to Mother’s Little Electronic Helpers.

But seriously, Comcast’s invasion of childhood strikes even me as going a bit too far. Kids should be out traipsing around the woods looking for ET, not streaming him or his Despicable cousins on a laptop while hermetically zipped inside of a tent.

So I have only this to say to despicable Comcast:

WHY? FIE!

First Friends

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Me and Nancy at Concord Bridge (MA), June 1961

Me and Nancy at Concord Bridge (MA), June 1961

I barely remember my first friend, Regan, who lived next door to us in Cincinnati. There’s a picture of us as at age four on a stone wall, in identical shorts and midriff blouses, belly buttons protruding. But that’s about it. Regan moved away to a neighboring state, which, in the 1950s geography of childhood, may as well have been the moon. Besides, less than a year later, my family moved to New England.

There I met Nancy. She had a pixie haircut and freckled face wide open with friendliness. She lived two corners and a short, steep hill away from me, back in the days when free-range children were the norm. Nancy’s house backed onto the woods, where we spent hours building forts, climbing rocks, and fashioning furniture out of twigs and moss. Her mother, strikingly beautiful and always welcoming, would serve up snacks and listen to our tales of adventure.

In fourth grade, I pushed the two of us to take up violin together. I scratched my way through a few torturous lessons before quitting, but Nancy really took to it.

Despite the disparities in our musical talent, Nancy and I were inseparable. Then, in fifth grade, her family relocated to the far corner of Massachusetts. We promised to stay best friends forever, even visited once or twice. But as often happens, we lost touch.

As I began to delve deeply a couple of years ago into my long-held obsession with ruptures in women’s friendships, I thought about Nancy a lot. Ours was a drift, not a rift—a relationship disrupted by circumstances, but not the complicated messiness I would later come to know with close female friends. I grew nostalgic for our wonderful times together. So, thanks to the modern-day miracles of Google, I found her.

Nancy has the same open, friendly face (we both have better haircuts now), a different last name, a husband and beautiful freckle-faced daughter, and a house in the country with lots of animals. Plus a long string of musical accomplishments under her name. A former symphony violinist, she is now an assistant professor of music, director of her college’s symphony and chamber orchestras, and coordinator for their Strings Program and auditions. I’m glad one of us made it past the scratching stage, and glad that I have such fond memories of my first best friend.

Now Nancy and I exchange emails and holiday news. She signed up for my blog, and even signed up her still beautiful and gracious mother!

Today is Nancy’s birthday.

Happy birthday, old friend!

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First friend stories? Are you still in touch? How have your earliest friendships shaped your adult ones?

The Vote for Independence

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UK and Scottish flags

I was alarmed when I learned that 16- and 17-year-olds were allowed to vote in Scotland’s bid for independence. What might happen if complicated economic and social issues were fanned with the flames of developmental yearnings? Extending the franchise to such young people seemed as dubious as introducing Ayn Rand to resentful teenage boys. After all, what adolescent chafing for freedom doesn’t want to be the self-determining hero who defies the influence of the state?

It might be unwise to superimpose youthful reading follies or one’s own household experience onto geopolitical affairs. The Scottish independence movement rests on an uneasy history and understandable grievances about economic and social policies that favor the rich and southern countries at the expense of the North.

Still, I couldn’t help but think of my own children’s strivings for independence over the years: The two-year-old who insisted on negotiating a steep flight of stairs by herself, chanting, “Self! Self!” with every step. Perpetual refrains of, “You’re not the boss of me!” Then the heavy artillery of adolescence: “Stop treating me like a kid!” “It’s so unfair!” “I can’t wait to get out of here!”

Is it really that far from my house to the blended Houses of Stuart and Hanover? Let’s drop in on a typical family meeting as it might have been unfolding recently at Balmoral Castle. We join parents David and Elizabeth (aka Queenie) as they sit down for a serious talk with their teenager, Scot:

David: Scotty, your mother and I want to talk with you about this petition for emancipation you’ve filed.

Scot: Stop calling me Scotty. I’ve told you a million times I prefer Scot. Besides, what’s there to talk about? I’ve had it with you, and I’m leaving.

Queenie: Is this about our taking all those pound notes from your billfold without asking?

Scot: It’s so unfair.  You treat me like a serf. I’m outta here.”

David: Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t possibly make it on your own!

Scot: Sure I can! In fact, I’ll be better off without you.

Queenie (crying a little): How could you do this to us after all we’ve done for you? I’m tired of you blaming us for everything!

David (shouting as Scot gets up from the table): We’ll cut off your allowance! If you walk through that door, there’s no coming back!

Scot slams out of the room.

David (turning to console his weeping wife): There, there, dear. It’s just a bluff. Scotty will calm down and be back in time for dinner.

In the ensuing weeks, Scot is more resolute than ever. He hangs out with friends, eliciting sympathy and offers of supper and a spare bed from their mothers, who have never much liked those imperious snobs, David and Elizabeth.

We rejoin Scot’s parents as they argue over whether to double down on tough love, or reach out to their wayward child. 

Queenie: Perhaps we’ve been too harsh . . .

David: Nonsense! We can’t give in to these antics!

Elizabeth: Maybe we could grant a little bit more independence . . . a later curfew, more control over his money . . . I don’t want to lose him.

David (sighing as he reaches for the phone): Scotty, er . . . Scot . . . It’s me, Dad. Listen, your mother and I want you to know we miss you. We love you very much and wish you’d come back. Can we talk?

A few hours later, Scot strolls through the front door.

Scot: Now that I’ve got your attention . . .

Or something like that . . .

Now the ballots have been counted. Scotland, despite the youth vote, has decided to stick with the parental unit. Perhaps the realities of going it alone registered; perhaps gaining concessions, more autonomy, and a later curfew were sufficient. With high-fives for democracy all around, the UK and Scotland are still one big, happy, dysfunctional family.

Which may be about as good as it gets for reasonable households and countries everywhere.

Muse on Strike

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On Strike signSince everything is copy, we writers appropriate everything—conversations with friends and colleagues, snippets from eavesdropping, news, movies, domestic and geopolitical dramas. Sometimes this habit of appropriation tempts us into being inappropriate.

Mothers who write, especially those who find their children to be a reliable Muse, face even greater challenges. Such as, “How do I mine all this rich material without leading to (a) lawsuits; (b) children needing to be in therapy all their lives; or (c) children writing another Mommie Dearest, assuming they’ve benefited from all that therapy and have inherited a knack for writing and retribution?

Caution is the watchword, at least once your child learns to read. Just as adorable nude shots of your toddler must be removed from photo albums before dating commences, so, too, must the experience you co-opt not be too embarrassing or revealing. Remember, just as some zealous Walgreen’s clerk might misconstrue your innocent pictures and report you to the child pornography hotline, so, too, may your writing land you in trouble.

Long ago I acquired a fig leaf of maternal decency by asking my daughters how they felt about my writing. Emma said, “I don’t care what you write as long as I don’t have to read it.” Ally, always the go-getter, said, “I don’t care what you write as long as I get a cut.”

I took that as full license. Exercised with great sensitivity and familiarity with libel laws, of course!

Recently, though, Emma remarked, “I read somewhere that you should never write about your children.”

A better mother might have responded, “Oh? Tell me more.” Or, “How are you feeling about my writing (which you never read) these days?” Or even, God forbid, “OK, I’ll stop.”

Instead I cried indignantly, “You’re changing the terms!”

Looks like it might be time to renegotiate the contract with my disgruntled muse before she walks out on me altogether.

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How do you handle writing about your kids? And what’s it been like to read about yourself in someone else’s writing?

Dinosaur Extinction

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Dinosaur plateThe plate is at the top of the stairs, where we put stuff we’re ready to donate.

“That’s odd,” I think to myself. But things have ended up in stranger places when my husband unloads the dishwasher. Jonathan forgives my never remembering how to use the flash drive, and I forgive his never knowing where anything goes.

I put the plate back in the cupboard. Jonathan takes it out again.

“Do we really need this anymore?” he sighs.

“Yes! ”  I reply, a little too adamantly.

“See if you can move it somewhere else. It’s in the way.”

Smiling dinosaurs in bright colors chase each other around the plate’s rim. Three separate compartments enforce the First Commandment of Children’s Food: Thou Shalt Not Touch. Smooth melamine ridges segregate the applesauce from the mac and cheese. Suspicious interlopers like spinach are safely sequestered in their own tiny corral. The brave toddler who stomachs the two-bite portion is rewarded by uncovering twin baby triceratops frolicking with their delighted mom. She, no doubt, is also encouraging her offspring’s herbivorous adventures.

My wary toddlers are now 23 and 26. They favor fusion foods and can be trusted with dishes that shatter.

Still, I need this plate. The dinosaur era is one of the sweeter pleasures of parenting. What other passions appeal to both sexes, all ages, inspire awe, and transform a trip to the museum from torture into an adventure? Besides, I have packed so much away in packing my children off to adulthood; I’m not yet ready to say goodbye to the little green creature hatching out of its eggshell. Maybe our grandchildren will eat from this plate someday, discerning T-rexes from brontosauruses as they diddle with their vegetables.

My husband’s ready, though. He wants to clear out the cupboards to make room for what the children’s needs have obscured. What might we assemble together without all the clutter?

With one last fond sigh, I put the plate on the donate pile.