Foodie (and Feeding)

This is a hard topic. And these days, I must admit, I find it hard to blog about hard topics. I think this is mainly because — in the past — I’ve been so burnt, so many times, by very mean people who troll the internet harshing and hating on bloggers like me. I wish I could say that those incidents of blog-related-painful-experiences (people harassing me via the blog and/or simply just drive-by bombing me with hateful comments) haven’t impacted my blogging. But, alas, I’m only human, and, no, I’m not that strong, and yes, sadly enough, they have effected me and what I’m willing to put out there.

These days I’m much more careful about posting raw, truthful, deep, transparent posts. Simply because I just hate to have to brace myself for the potential onslaught of hating-on-me. After a few times of that happening to you, you sort of build up a resistance to wanting to open yourself too fully (or, at least, I have). And so, often, I — lately — try to keep it relatively surface-level.

Anyway…. having said all that… here goes…

So— you know, I know, and my boys know, that they were starving in their first part of their life. In their first months they survived life in a Haitian orphanage. Which was, by no exaggeration, not easy. When we got Kyle and Owen, at age 8.5 months old, they were severely malnourished. They had distended bellies, they were anemic, and they had lots of side-effects of starvation. What we focus on, most of the time, is the miraculous gift of the fact that they were and are alive. We focus on the fact that they were kept alive by human people on the ground in Haiti who did the hard job of making sure they didn’t starve to death. We focus on the beauty that is their resiliency and their life story. But at the core of it all we always know the truth. And that truth has core consequences all the way through every thread of life that is woven from past to present to future.

Kyle and Owen, despite the fact that we got them at such a young age (particularly for Haitian adoption), have ripple effects of this reality. A lot of this goes into territory that I see as private and too intimate to share here. But I have posted a little bit about it before.

Today I just want to say just a little something about a subject that has been big on my mind lately. That is, the Foodie that my son Owen has become. And the joy and gratification I find in feeding this particularly special little soul of a person.

Owen has a high-octane personality and persona. He’s also a high-octane energy kind of guy. He is non-stop, all the time, every day. Anyone who’s ever known him will tell you that. His energy is off-the-charts. I am sure he burns more calories every hour than most of us burn in a day.

It takes a lot of food to fuel that kind of charisma and enthusiasm and zest for life.

There is something really incredibly life-fulfilling and deeply joyful about feeding a kid like that — and I think, in this case, it is especially pronounced because of his history and how I play a role in that. I know that it is because of Braydon and I that he ate for the first eight months of his life. We paid money to have him fed (and I don’t want to get into it here, but we also paid to have his birthparents fed too) for those months that he and Kyle were in the orphanage. I loved him, and was feeding him, as best I could, from a distance. I think for a mother, especially, the feeding thing can feel really profound, and for me it most certainly did, and does.

Once I had those babies, though, feeding took on a whole other layer of meaning for me. We used bottle feeding as our major form of attachment bonding. With Owen, especially, it was challenging. This was a baby who did not want to attach. And if we hadn’t worked our buttooskies off, for a long, long time, we would have had a serious mess on our hands. We had to force him to let us hold the bottle (he’d fight us to hold it himself); we had to practically force him to lock eye contact with us (by taking the bottle out of his mouth if he would look away— which he tried to do incessantly); and we had to feed him and feed him and feed him and feed him and feed him (because he’d scream and rage and throw the empty bottle across the room as soon as the last sip had been sucked out of it). He had to learn that we would feed him and feed him and feed him and feed him.

For me, and maybe for him too (?), the feeding was symbolic. We had to teach him (and teach ourselves) that we were not going to give up on him, that we were there for good, and that we were going to keep at it and stick with him and love him unconditionally and endlessly.

We had to attach ourselves to him so that he could attach to us. And the feeding — and the food — became a primary mechanism through which that process became tangible for us and for him.

We went through many bottles. Many, many cans of formula. Many, many, many trips to the store to ensure that we would never run out of that very specific type of enriched and fortified formula that our pediatrician insisted we feed them so that we could fix their anemia and all of their other vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

I can’t say that we “fixed” it all. But we sure as heck made a good dent in it.

Over time, my boy has come to flourish. We have our moments, oh yes we do. But he is alive and kicking and we are in this for the long haul. And Owen is, truly, my heart’s love and joy. He is the most unique and amazing gift to me. And I will forever and always adore this child of mine unconditionally and endlessly.

One of the many things that Owen has become is a Foodie. A Foodie after my own heart, this boy can eat. And he can eat all sorts of things with the very best of them.

He is unafraid to try anything, anytime, anywhere— particularly if it is exotic, ethnic, and/or authentically unusual. The other day, on the beach, he managed to catch a small fish with his hands (he is, like many Haitian boys, fast like that). He ran to me to show me the fish, flapping away, cupped in his bare hands. He said, “It looks like a sardine!” I said, “It sure does!” He said, “Can I eat it?!” I said, “Sure!” That took him aback. He thought about it for a minute and asked me, “Are you sure? Like, just raw, like this, I can just eat it right here, right now?” I said, “You know, most people wouldn’t, but if you were stranded on an island somewhere and you needed protein, I’d guarantee you’d eat it! So, why not now?” He thought long and hard about that, and for a while there I was pretty darn sure he was going to do it right there on the spot, but then he decided against it. He threw it back into the water and said, “Nah! I’m not going to. You know why? Because on the way home we’re getting stone crabs and I want to save my appetite!” And off he ran for more catch-and-release hand-fishing.

That’s my boy!

I bought him a couple of pounds of stone crab claws on the way home from the beach that day. And I delighted in watching him crack them open with enthusiasm, dunking them in melted butter and cocktail sauce so that they were decadently dripping as he dropped the beautiful pieces of crab meat into his mouth.

For breakfast these days he’s been a big eater. Like I said, it takes a lot to fuel this kid. For Owen, a typical breakfast at the beach house is two fried eggs, two waffles, and a big ‘ole smoothie (1 banana, 1/2 apple, 1/3 cup whole milk Greek yogurt, protein powder, 1 cup frozen strawberries, 1 cup orange juice). Yes, folks, that’s a lot for a 10-year-old to put down. As just his first meal of the day. There is nothing that gives me more gratification that watching him eat that nourishment.

Nourishing him is my joy and my pleasure.

My son is a miracle and I am proud of it. He knows his story. And so do I. There is no shame in it. He is a healthy, thriving, tremendous powerful force of a soul and he is on this planet to move mountains and shake valleys. He is my son, we are hard-core attached, and I will feed him happily until the day I can no longer fry an egg.