Oh, the Horror

My teenage daughter, S, is solidly in her horror movie phase. Luckily, she doesn’t want to watch the gory movies because I would not be able to participate. I can’t butcher a chicken without feeling queasy, and even fake blood can make my stomach turn. She and I much prefer the kind of suspense that makes you watch from between your fingers or through the weave of a blanket, my preferred viewing method. I have seen more scary movies over the past year than I did in the previous forty-odd, but I suck it up in order to spend time with my lovely child, periodically shrieking and knocking over popcorn.

The good news is I am not nearly as frightened as I used to be. I am able to walk down the hall alone and use the bathroom by myself. I can even look in the mirror, and I don’t have to turn on all the lights. The bad news? I fear, between the constant creepy movies and the daily news, we may have become jaded. We don’t seem to scare quite as easily as we once did, yet the real world provides enough terror without having to search for it as entertainment.

A few months ago, my girls and I were at the beach for a long weekend. We brought along one of S’s beloved friends, AH, who shares S’s passion for spooky movies. We had gone out for dinner and decided to stop at a Redbox, one of those DVD vending rental machines, on the way back to the condo for a night of thrills and chills. My other daughter, E, stayed in the car in the Kroger parking lot because she has not only outgrown horror movies, she also insists she cannot sit still for over 90 minutes, even though she does it every day at school.

AH, S, and I stood in the fading sunlight by the outdoor Redbox kiosk, trying to agree on a movie. The usual underage degenerates squatted nearby on the bench, probably waiting to approach a sketchy adult to ask for an illegal beer purchase. We ignored them and got down to the business of selecting a movie, which was scary enough on its own. Three people trying to agree on anything? Someone could end up in a body bag.

As I scrolled through the titles, I read them aloud. Ouija Board? Stupid, they said. The Forest?Already seen it. The Visit? More funny than scary.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?  No, just no.

I made my case for the zombie movie. E was in the process of reading her first Jane Austin book for school, and I thought the movie would be great if she didn’t finish it in time, kind of like SparkNotes. S and AH thought it looked boring and stupid and definitely not scary.

I had the feeling we weren’t alone anymore. The little neck hairs stood up, telling me to turn around.

Directly behind the two girls, these young, vulnerable teenagers, stood a middle-aged man, reeking of alcohol. He sported a tank top and a leathery tan, an overgrown mustache, and some seriously bloodshot eyes.

He practically leaned into them, and he mumbled, “Whhaa arrre we playin’?”

“Excuse me?” I said.

He took a wad of crumpled bills from his pocket. “I gaaa a dollar for the nex’ game,” he said, and tried to push past us to shove a dollar into the Redbox.

I put my hand up in the universal Stop and Back the Fuck Up position. “Sir,” I said loudly. “This is a movie stand, and we are selecting a movie. You will need to step back until we have finished and then you can have a turn.”

S and AH were paralyzed with fear, eyes bulging and unblinking.“Don’t move a muscle,” I whispered through my teeth at them.

The man lurched closer and continued to slur his words in our direction and wave his sweaty dollar bill around. Finally, another intoxicated man came over and hauled him away, over to the rough-looking teenagers who thought they just won the jackpot. I glared at him until I was comfortable enough to turn back to the Redbox.

“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies it is,” I said to the girls. “We are not spending another second picking out a movie.” I swiped my credit card and grabbed the DVD, and we race walked back to the car, where E was waiting for us.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she greeted us warmly. “Where’s the fire?”

“Did you see that guy walk up to us?” I asked her.

S and AH both talked rapidly, over each other, to explain to E what had transpired at the Redbox.

E pointed at the man. “That guy?” she asked.

“Yes, him. God, he’s drunk,” I said.

“He smelled horrible,” S said, “like old beer bottles and raw onions.”

“And pee,” AH added.

“He just pulled up in that car over there,” E said. “He was the driver.”

The movie wasn’t very scary, but after the Redbox drunk, nothing fictional would have frightened us. I only hoped that when E had her test on Pride and Prejudice, she would throw in something about the zombies.

Collective Memories

15 years ago, the lives of almost 3,000 Americans were lost because of coordinated terror attacks. We could not have anticipated or prepared for such a horrific event; we could only respond with shock, with anger, with sadness, with fear, and ultimately, with distrust.

I don’t know if everyone remembers where they were that day. I remember. I had just dropped off my 20 month old at daycare. I was pregnant with child number two, my child who was born after 9/11. I went to Target, trying to get my errands finished early so I could go home and rest before I needed to pick up my daughter. Target was quiet, unusually quiet, even for an early morning. I walked around, throwing the items on my list into my cart. No one spoke to each other, as if we were all observing a moment of silence but we didn’t know why. I only knew that a plane crashed into one of the towers. I didn’t know that it was on purpose, or the first of four planes diverted.

I drove home and sat on the couch in front of the television. I flipped between several television channels for hours, watching the planes hit the towers, over and over again. I felt numb and alone, except for the child I was carrying, a child who would be born into a very different America than the one I knew as a child.

As we mourned the many losses we suffered that day, we became a different country. We gladly gave up a bit of personal freedom in the name of public safety. We were encouraged to turn in neighbors, to report suspicious behaviors. Our government patched together a plan, a reactive solution, and we reminded ourselves to never forget.

We reacted more, by removing shoes and nail clippers and shampoo bottles at the airport. We invaded countries that ultimately suffered worse at our hands than by their own. We demonized an entire religion based on a small percentage of evil people, and we turned fear into an American value.

What we did forget, in our goal of never forgetting, is what being free felt like. We lost our sense of hope and trust in other people. Our response as a nation centered on protecting ourselves from ever experiencing such terror again, yet we live with our own fear on a daily basis. I don’t know about you, but I am more frightened of the divisiveness and anger that has torn us apart than the possibility of another major violent attack.

Some other things we should never forget are other sad moments in our history. McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Japanese internment camps. Slavery. The Trail of Tears. We are not above committing some pretty heinous acts against each other as a country. How did we as a nation overcome them before? Where are those history lessons?

I don’t want to make America great again. I don’t know what that means. What I want is to feel safe and hopeful. I want my children to grow up without having active shooter drills at school or knowing where the closest exit is in the movie theater. I want us not to spend hours at the airport because we all have to take off our shoes, unless we want to pay more money for the privilege of keeping them on while skipping ahead in line. I want us to respect our police officers, but I also want them to rebuild community relationships. I want our leaders to be problem solvers, not finger pointers. I want us to all take a good, long look at our Constitution, not just the 2^nd amendment or part of the 1^st, and try to live by what we use as our guiding principles.

I want us all to do better, to be better people, to raise better children. Better isn’t about winning or making money; it’s about supporting one another, about showing kindness, about learning to trust, about listening instead of speaking, about thinking before acting. Better is when we all move ahead, instead of stepping on the backs of others to jockey for position. Is it a race, a contest, a journey? We all end up in the same place eventually, and I for one am not in a hurry to get there.

It is okay not to agree on everything. It is perfectly fine to discuss different ideas and not have a solution. It is one of the rights that we should exercise regularly.

I don’t know if the terrorists did this to us, or we did this to ourselves. We turned against each other. We suspended some of our core beliefs as a nation, and I don’t think we will ever be the same.

I know good people who do good things for others, and I cling to these examples to find my hope for the future. I try to teach my children to look for the good, and if they don’t see it, to be the good that other people see. I don’t know if that is enough to make a difference, but I like to think it is more effective than removing my shoes at the airport.

Progress, at What Cost?

As I was driving to Target yesterday, I passed a house that I always pass, but something was different. Along the road, at the corners of the property and next to the driveway, were tall wooden posts, the first signs of a fence that is being installed.

The fence made me sad. In a matter or days or weeks, depending on whether they are hiring someone or doing it themselves, that house and its surrounding yard will no longer be visible from the road.

I love to look at that house. It looks a bit like an out-in-the-country home, only new neighborhoods are encroaching on its isolated location. The house itself has some years on it. It has a front porch and is in need of a fresh coat of paint. I can picture a couple of cane-backed rocking chairs out there, but honestly, I have never noticed if they have rocking chairs. I may have missed my chance for clarification.

It’s not the house itself that draws my attention. It’s that magnificent yard. So much is happening out there. In one corner is an old RV, which may possibly be a room addition of sorts. There is a shed in the other corner, and in between, lots of things clutter the yard. There’s a crudely penned area on one side of the house, and in the back, what I think might be an above-ground pool.  Clothes lines, old bikes, a short windmill, mostly a bunch of junk, really, but not a bonafide junk yard. It’s the kind of yard that demands you pay attention, which so much to see, but no real sense of order. It would be fine in the country, which it used to be, but now, it looks a bit like an eyesore, probably more to the neighbors than to me. I find it fascinating.

The real reason I love the house is that I never know what animal I’m going to see in the front yard. I’m not talking dogs or cats or even a rogue chicken.

In the past, I used to see a mostly white swayback horse with a little age on it. It would mill about in front of the house, grazing on blades of grass that sprouted at random through patches of dirt. The horse had no lead, no supervision, and no fence. It would just stand in the yard and chew. I never saw it out in the road. That horse knew its boundaries.

I have driven by that house on and off for at least a decade. At first, I saw the horse almost every time, and then less and less, until finally, no more horse. Even though I never saw it, I still looked for it every time. Like the house itself, the horse had some years on it, and I figured nature took its course.

And then one day, I saw a pair of Sicilian donkeys. Regular donkeys are just sort of heehaw ho hum, but Sicilian donkeys? Holy hell, I want a dozen of them. They too hung out in the front yard, minding their own donkey business, doing their donkey thing. I took more trips to Target than a family of four warranted, in case I could catch a glimpse of those beautiful taupe mini donkey-donks just chilling in the yard.

Cute AF, am I right?

 

Then one day, there were three! A baby had been born, perhaps in a manger, and it was the cutest thing I had ever seen. The homeowners seemed more protective of the wee donkey, and at some point a makeshift corral was built to contain the family of three. I would slow down whenever I had occasion to drive by, grinning like a fool the whole time if I was lucky enough to spy them.

The donkeys, unfortunately, are no longer residents of the yard. I am convinced they were forced to give them away, because no one in their right mind would willingly part with a family unit of Sicilian donkeys.

And now, the tell-tale signs of a fence have been erected. I will be denied of my chance to eyeball the yard, looking for animals that seem so out of place on the way to Target. So yes, I am a little sad, because progress means more development, and development means country houses are no longer isolated, and maybe having a horse in the front yard is not the sort of thing that should be happening. Going forward, every time I pass that fenced-in house, I will reflect back to the good old days, when the country was the country, and donkeys and horses roamed freely in front yards.

In the Off Season

Last week, we celebrated Christmas in July, on July 25, to be exact. Yes, it’s the middle of summer, and to be fair, we are Jewish, but hear me out. I had my reasons, and they were all pretty good as far as I am concerned.

For starters, it’s hot, ungodly hot, the kind of heat that makes domestic abuse and other violent crimes increase. It is so hot you literally want to beat or murder another human, as if you needed another reason.

Also, it’s six months from Christmas. That’s a long time to wait for holiday fun. Think about it, other than summer vacations, what does the summer have going for it in the way of celebrations? Fireworks and red, white, and blue clothing? Hot dogs and hamburgers cooked on a grill? Watermelon seed spitting and competitive eating? None of those hold a cinnamon-scented candle to the winter holidays. There’s no gift exchange, no special decorations, not even any themed movies. And forget about Hanukkah in July. That has literally no ring to it. Plus, there is no way I am stinking up the whole house with the smell of fried potatoes.

Which brings me to the real reason we celebrated Christmas in July.  Have you seen Krampus, a movie loosely based on a German folktale about the darker side of Christmas? Krampus is a sort of half goat, half demon creature that punishes the bad boys and girls who don’t deserve Santa’s good graces, and seems to have that dark side we have come to expect from German traditions. The movie premiered last holiday season, but we did not get a chance to catch it at the theaters, and now it’s available on Redbox. It seemed wrong somehow to watch a holiday movie in the middle of summer….but if you make it a special occasion, well, you get Christmas in July.

I am known as one who likes to run with a theme. I sat down and came up with a whole menu and everything. Originally, it was going to be turkey sandwiches with cranberry mayo and decorated sugar cookies, but S, my daughter, didn’t like the idea of mayo on her sandwich, and I can barely stomach the mess of decorated cookies at Christmastime. We switched to roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, and frozen hot chocolate, most of which could be purchased from an upscale fancy grocery store and reheated at home. Score!

The day of the festivities arrived. I was working on an article about ways to keep cool during the heat of summer, which is one of the more interesting topics I’ve had from my freelance web content job, and I learned a few ideas during my research. Some of the weirder tips included spritzing your sheets with cool water before you slip into bed, which is a great way to get a head start on your night sweats, and putting a fan behind a big bowl of ice like it’s 1916. One of the other things I read suggested reversing your ceiling fans to run counter clockwise in order to push the cold air down.

I mentioned the fan trick to my husband while my daughter, S, and I sat on the couch, trying to keep cool and save energy by not moving any parts of our bodies. He said that went against logic and engineering, but if I read it on the Internet, it must be true, so we could give it a try. He reversed the direction on the fan. It slowed down, stopped, and then began turning in the opposite direction. My husband stood directly below it with his hand stretched in the air, trying to see if he could feel the cooler air.

And then, just like that, it started to snow.

Gentle puffs of built-up dust and cat hair floated down and settled on the coffee table, the sofa, even on S and me. The dust and funk of that ceiling fan that no one can reach blew softly around us like fat gray flakes before blanketing every surface underneath it.

“Look, snow! It’s snowing for Christmas in July!” I exclaimed.

“That’s disgusting, and it’s getting all over me,” S said.

“When was the last time you cleaned this fan?” my husband asked.

S sneezed, and my husband returned the fan to its normal clockwise setting. I got up and vacuumed all the snow dust.

“Gee, cold air,” he said, and walked into the other room to play the Centipede arcade game that he bought the family two Christmases ago.

Later, we listened to Bing Crosby crooning familiar carols while we ate our lukewarm mashed potatoes and rotisserie chicken. Even upscale fancy grocery stores ignore turkey in the summer months. After we cleaned up and made the frozen hot chocolate, we settled under blankets upstairs to watch Krampus, and for a moment, we forgot all about the summer heat.

 

 

Yes, I am Tired

I’m tired. I’m tired of thinking about rape. I’m tired of reading stories of sexual violence against women. I’m tired of men who commit these acts of violence getting the minimum of consequences for their actions. I’m tired of women being victimized, diminished, and blamed for what they must suffer at the hands of perpetrators. I’m tired of the privileged culture in which we live straddling the line between tolerance and fairness and the oppressive and inherently unfair good old days.

Is this about the Stanford rape case? The one with the young, white Olympic hopeful who can never recover from the effects of a party culture that led to twenty minutes of action? The one whose father is worried about his inability to enjoy a steak? The one who will serve three hard months in prison of a six-month sentence because the judge does not want him to suffer any more?

Yes and no.

About a month ago, something horrible happened that involved my daughter’s middle school. You may have heard about it on the national news. It was kind of a big deal. An eighth grade girl from my daughter’s school and a boy from a different middle school hung out on a Sunday afternoon. They drank alcoholic beverages. They had consensual sex. They drank some more. The girl passed out, and the boy continued to do sexual things to her. He decided to share what he was doing by Face Timing at least one person. That individual, or possibly more people, saved the FaceTime video and shared it with other people. Some of those other people saved it as well to show it to even more people.

The girl was allegedly naked from the waist down and in her own vomit. She had to have her stomach pumped at the hospital. The boy was charged with second degree sexual assault. I don’t know if these details are accurate as reported in the news or just from the pieced-together version of the rumors.

The other people who saved and sent the video are also middle school students. Some of them go to my daughter’s school, and others are enrolled at other middle schools in the county. Four of those people, all middle school girls, were charged with disrupting school and possession of child pornography. Other students had their phones confiscated by police detectives for forensic testing. 

It was all anyone talked about for the last few weeks of school. Students talked to each other about it. Parents tried to figure out details. The only ones who remained silent were the school administrators, hiding behind the fact that the assault did not take place at school and therefore they were not obligated to address the rumors or provide support for students troubled by the assault or those rumors. We were all supposed to ignore it or pretend it didn’t happen, or worse, that it didn’t affect us.

When the students talked, they seemed to focus on the wrong information from the story. They discussed this girl’s already bad reputation. They said she was asking for it. They said what did she expect. They said she should have known better, and that she is just as much to blame. She drank. She had sex. She deserved it.

My daughter came home and shared these conversations with me, about how the girl never came back to school, how badly she felt for her, and how she tried to tell other students that it wasn’t the girl’s fault. My daughter was in the minority in her beliefs.

And that makes me tired.

Clearly, the two stories have similarities. Girls were drinking. Boys were drinking.  Girls passed out. Boys did things to them that they did not have consent to do. We all act shocked when we hear about it, and a percentage of us will try to make sense of it by blaming the victim.

I have two teenaged girls. They are both tall. They have some curves. They dress like most girls their age, which means skirts and shorts are short, and arms are bared, and bra straps frequently show, sometimes intentionally, sort of like an accessory.  They are not whores. They do not dress likes whores. They don’t know any whores, and they are also unsure of what whores wear. Nothing about their clothing means they are asking for unwanted attention. They dress like many girls their ages, and they are comfortable in their garments and in their skin, and they should be comfortable.

My daughters are good people. The Stanford victim and the middle school girl might be good people too. They might not. They might just be human. They did not deserve what happened to them.

The boys who sexually assaulted them are not scrutinized in the same way. They too drank, but they weren’t assaulted. They need to be held accountable for their actions. I don’t know if they are good people. They are also human, but they committed crimes and owe society, and women, a debt for their actions in order to return to the community.

I am tired of other people not understanding this simple fact.

Some of us call it rape culture. Some people say men can’t help that they are visually stimulated. Other people say that women need to be careful and stop putting themselves in potentially dangerous situations. But rape happens everywhere. It can happen at someone’s home, or at a party, or behind a dumpster. Alcohol is available in homes and groceries stores and restaurants and bars. Dumpsters are behind most every commercial property. What situations are women supposed to be avoiding?

It is always, at every level, about consent. If you do not have consent, you have no right to initiate further action on another person.

Some people also say that women who lie about being raped are part of the problem. I’m tired of that too. One person’s lie does not discredit many people’s truth. Instead, let’s concentrate on the men, because by and large, the men are entirely the problem.  Women who rape, like women who lie about rape, are not the issue. They are an anomaly. Men rape women, and other men, and children. It is by and large a male-perpetrated crime.

Men need to know they must have permission, even in a relationship, even in a marriage. Women need to know they have the power to say no. Men need to believe women when they say no. Men need to tell other men to believe women. Women need to tell other women that they believe them. Men and women need to talk about what no means with each other. They should discuss it with their children. Their children should understand what sex is and how it can only occur if both people say yes.

When you think children are too young for that conversation, remember my daughter’s middle school.  Stop wanting our society to return to the good old days. Rape was around then too, and women were property, and consent didn’t matter. Now it still is, and they aren’t, and it should, and everyone needs to talk about until we can all agree that it does not matter what a woman wears or drinks, it only matters if she said yes, and that any man, of any race or socioeconomic class or age or athletic ability, needs to accept her answer, or in the absence of one, realize that if she did not say yes, then it is a no.

And we should not stop talking about it until rape stops, until punishments are fair and enforced, until victims are no longer blamed, until we can all agree that consent is key.  Until we are all tired of the ways things used to be, and the way they are now.  If you want to make the world a better place, start with this issue, and don’t stop until everyone understands. Only then, after being tired for so long, can we rest.

There Will Be Blood

I have two teenage daughters, and I am a woman at the end of the childbearing bell curve. We spend a lot of time in my house menstruating, talking about menstruating, complaining about menstruation, preparing to menstruate, and recovering from menstruation. All totally normal.

Brace yourself. I am going to talk about menstruation.

I can commiserate with my girls. I see them suffer from cramps, and I remember that misery as I microwave heating pads and dole out fistfuls of ibuprofen to offer them some relief. I buy an endless supply of pads in at least three sizes and tampons and panty liners, none of which are ever on sale at the same time, and all of which are taxed as a luxury item, because there is nothing more luxurious than shoving overpriced chemically enhanced cotton wads in or near a cooch. I scrub panties and the crotches of jeans with hydrogen peroxide or a paste of baking soda and vinegar, making volcanos out of all the stains. I also endure the tears and rudeness and lethargy that one of us is constantly subjecting the rest of us to; misery loves company but hates everyone indiscriminately.

I’ve been doing this period thing for almost ¾ of my life, and while I would love to not deal with it, I don’t like the implications of breaking up with my lady friend. I actually thought that the dreaded M word had begun because I went from my current regular irregularity to a total uterine strike.

My period is all over the calendar. Not literally because what? Gross. I mean it’s not every month and then it’s twice in one month. It’s never a 28-day cycle like in the birth control ads. Sometimes it’s every 40 days, or every 22 days, or every 15 days, which is a real treat if it lasts 8 days or so. And then, out of the blue, it was over 75 days. It wasn’t my normal.

Naturally, I started to freak out. I’m old. This is it. I don’t know the first thing about hormone replacement. I’m going to wither and dry up and then fill out in all the wrong places. I will become invisible, as women of a certain age do, no use to anyone but not ready to shove out in the middle of the ocean on an ice flue.

I turned to the Internet, the source of the best and most accurate information in times of panic and worry.  Here’s what I learned: the definition of menopause is cessation of menstruation for a year in women of a certain age. I had 290 days to go.

Lucky for me, I needed to see my gynecologist for my annual exam, so I didn’t have to go out of my way to discuss it. I could just wait another week and then casually mention it with my feet in the stirrups. Deep down inside, I was convinced I was going to need a D and C, that fun procedure where they dilate you and scrape all the ick off your uterine walls. It’s an old school abortion, well, not wire hanger old school, but pre-medically induced abortion, back when women and their doctors could still make reproductive decisions together.  Naturally, I freaked out some more.

My appointment started out totally normal. Sit and wait. Pee in a cup. Finger stick. Sit and wait some more, only this time in a room filled with pregnant women. Feel old because you think you are in menopause and these women are all still fertile and youthful and you don’t want to be them but you don’t want to be you either.

I followed the nurse to the exam room. She asked me the usual medical history update questions, and then she asked the first day of my last period. I told her 80 days ago. She handed me some pamphlets and told me to disrobe and don my paper drape and vest.

These are the pamphlets:

 

They burned my flesh, just holding them in my hand. I stuffed them in my purse, got undressed, and assumed the position on the table.

My gynecologist seemed a bit surprised to hear I was on period sabbatical, because, get this, I am too young to be in menopause. She wanted to know about my mother and grandmother’s menopause experience, but they were of the generations who had unnecessary hysterectomies because something was wrong with every woman who was no longer having children.  Basically, we had nothing to go on except the 80 days part.

“Are you having menopausal symptoms?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t know what they are,” I said. And it’s true. I knew about moodiness, hot flashes, and no periods. Was there more to expect? “I mean, I could have hot flashes, but how do I know? Sometimes I get kind of hot for no reason.”

“Are you waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and have to change your nightclothes?”

“No, nothing like that,” I told her.

“Crying for no reason?” she asked.

“I have two teenage daughters. There is always a reason,” I replied.

She ordered a blood sample to check my hormone levels and then prescribed Progesterone, which would make me have a period if I was still supposed to have one. She instructed me to wait for the lab results before taking the medication, but that I would need to take if for 5 days in order to make my period start. Apparently, if you are supposed to menstruate but you don’t, that can also be a problem, although she didn’t elaborate. I made a mental note to look it up on the Internet when I got home.

“So, I don’t have to have a D and C?” I asked her.

“Where did you get that idea? Of course not,” my doctor said.

“My own head. And the internet. But mostly my imagination,” I replied.

“Stop doing that. Stop looking up things, and stop thinking,” she recommended.

Two days later, the nurse called me to report that my hormone levels are normal. Totally normal. I am what is considered perimenopausal, which is totally normal for a woman of a certain age.

I took the damn pills. After yet another week, I got my period. It was not the massacre I expected. It was totally normal.

Since then, times are back to my 45 day, 30 day, 19 day routine. Perimenopause. I don’t really know what else to look for because I threw away my pamphlets. I imagine most women of a certain age do the same, and it’s totally normal.

Is This Organic?

Do you ever think some people take the organic food trend too far?

I started buying predominantly organic food for my family about seven years ago. When I first had my girls, I bought organic milk because I was concerned about the added hormones. I didn’t want my daughters to start first grade and their periods at the same time or fatten up for slaughter. As our household income went up, I started adding more organic and local foods to our weekly grocery shopping because we could afford it, gradually replacing most of the conventional food we ate. That organic shit ain’t cheap, my friends.

Nowadays, my weekly grocery shopping has turned into an almost every day errand. I rotate between three to five stores, depending on what’s on sale and what I am planning to cook. With the amount of fresh produce I buy, I do have go shopping more frequently because we either finish it all or it spoils without all those chemicals to keep it in pristine condition past its prime. It’s practically a full-time job, all the grocery shopping and cooking. I don’t mind really, unless something goes wrong, like when the free-range chicken is spoiled or when I crack open an avocado and find a giant pit surrounded by dark brown bruises mocking me.

Sometimes, it’s something worse.

Last night, I made what I hoped was a healthy and tasty meal for my people. I had vegetarian Italian sausage, which I happen to love because it doesn’t contain gristle or indeterminate white hunks, and a large bunch of green kale. I sliced the “sausage” and sautéed it with chopped onions and red pepper strips. After I stripped the kale from the thick stems, I rinsed the leaves in a colander, shook off the excess water, and chopped them before adding them and minced garlic to the pan. Salt, pepper, a splash of chicken broth, also organic, went into the pan to simmer while whole wheat rigatoni boiled in a pot of kosher sea-salted water.

I made up dinner like I usually do, pretending I am on “Chopped” or some other cooking show where you have a few random ingredients and have to make a tasty entrée to present to the judges. In my case, the judges are my family, none of whom particularly like any of the same foods. One hates the fake sausage. One detests kale. One thinks rigatoni is stupid. My goal isn’t so much to impress my panel, but rather to see if I can create a dish that none of them thoroughly enjoy, except for me, because I pretty much love everything I put in it. That’s the benefit of doing the cooking. If they don’t like it, they can take a turn at the stove.

I do get some comments, usually in the form of a backhanded compliment, like “this sausage doesn’t have a funny aftertaste” or “the kale doesn’t taste as bad as I expected.” You can imagine how motivating the feedback is.

Three of us sat down to eat the rigatoni with Italian vegan sausage and kale, presented in lovely porcelain pasta bowls, with a sprinkle of chopped parsley and shredded parmesan. The missing person, S, was at her dance class, but rest assured there would be plenty for her to sample when she got home. Everyone enjoyed it.

My husband devoured all of his, even though he doesn’t really care for any of the foods individually, including the pasta. I am married to the only man I know who hates noodles of all shapes.

I was attempting to mindfully eat my food, enjoying the contrast of textures and flavors, taking time to chew thoroughly and really taste it.

My oldest daughter, E, tends to unhinge her jaw and swallow whatever is on her plate in one breath. The pasta was no different, except she left a small pile of vegetables at the bottom of the bowl, which she moved around with her fork. We chatted about our days, and she sat, listening to or ignoring us, playing with the few leaves of kale.

Then she freaked out.

She threw her fork down and stood up, open mouthed, hands on either side of her face.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” my husband, her father, asked.

“Bug! Oh my god, there’s a bug in my bowl! There’s a bug! I almost ate a bug!” She paced around the kitchen sink, open mouthed, not really gagging, but you could tell she wanted to. “I’m gonna be sick! I almost ate a bug! Didn’t you wash it? What if I ate its eggs? I’m going to die!” E was giving an Oscar-worthy performance.

“Of course I washed the kale! I washed it and dried it and then chopped it. Are you sure it’s a bug?” I defended myself, feebly, because it really didn’t matter what I said. She was already over the edge.

“Look at it! It’s got legs and eyes! I know what a bug looks like! I almost ate it! I’m going to be sick!”

“Just calm down,” my husband said. “Lots of cultures eat bugs all the time. Protein. We have a certain allotted amount of insects and feces in all of our processed foods. You don’t think you eat bugs in every bowl of cereal, anything that contains flour?”

“You’re not helping,” I said. I picked up her bowl and took a peek. All I saw were chopped leaves of kale. Except one of them had an interloper, a small oddly shaped insect with its legs compactly folded against its exoskeleton. “Yep. It’s a bug. I think it’s a stink bug.”

“I’m going to be sick!” she shrieked and ran upstairs.

I showed the bowl to my husband, who pushed it away. “I don’t want to see that,” he said.

“I kind of wish she ate it, She would have never know it was there,” I said, looking at my own bowl, which contained the rest of my dinner. “I really liked that. I guess we have to throw the rest away.”

“Well, I’m not eating it,” he said.

“So, I guess I can’t really save some for S when she gets home from dance, huh?”

He gave me a look.

I got up and dumped the rest of the meal into the garbage. Then I went upstairs to soothe E, who was in her bed, looking at her phone.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I could have eaten that. I probably ate its eggs. It’s probably infesting my intestines as we speak. I’ll be dead before breakfast.”

“Seriously?” I said. “There are no eggs implanting in your digestive tract.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“Because I cooked it. No eggs would still be viable. I suppose that’s the end of kale for a while, huh?”

“Six months at least. No leafy greens for at least six months,” E declared.

“But it’s salad season,” I said.

She gave me a look.

“At least you know it was organic,” I said before gently closing her bedroom door and going back downstairs to clean up the dinner dishes and mourn the rest of the meal, lying in the top of the trash can.

When S got home from dance, she ate a frozen dinner, but it was also organic.