No. 015: How Some Skinny Boys Taught Me to Be a Better Woman.
A little food for feminine thought.
This year I knew better than to waste my effort on deviled eggs. I limited the spread to finger foods I knew the whole family would eat, most of which came prepared and packaged from Trader Joe’s: olives, pickles, crackers, dried fruit. I did buy a couple exotic cheeses I was curious to try, and for my own entertainment I arranged the goods into an artistic display. But all things considered it was a simple meal.
I’ve been serving “big dinner” (our family’s tag for charcuterie) on Christmas for several years now. In the mid-afternoon I lay the spread on the table, and after a brief, initial frenzy of samples we all return to playing our new games and reading our new books, then snack sporadically throughout the afternoon and evening. Christmas big dinner works well for us in this season of life: our sons’ attention is generally so transfixed on whatever new toys they found under the tree that morning, they would balk at being distracted with a sit-down meal.
In the past I’ve tried to incorporate at least a few homemade components—baked brie, decorated sugar cookies, fresh bread—into the smorgasbord. All of it ends up nibbled upon to some degree, but given how many other snacks there are to choose from, most of the homemade stuff ends up as leftovers, which depreciate in flavor after the first night in the fridge.
This year I finally acquiesced that the work wasn’t worth it. I was better off stocking the board with snacks I knew would be eaten immediately or that at least could be returned to a box or jar and stored for a longer period; so that’s exactly what I did. Even so, the boys hardly touched the food, so focused were they on playing with their presents.
Sometimes it still bewilders me. This isn’t the Womanhood I trained for.
The way to a man’s heart (and presumably also to a growing boy’s heart) is through his stomach, so they told me; and that was good news for me, because I love food, and I genuinely love to cook. I can make a beautiful basket of buttermilk biscuits and a perfect plate of peach pie. I could teach a mac and cheese masterclass, and I was baking my own artisan bread a decade before the trad wives entered the scene. If food is what it takes to keep the customer satisfied, I should be in business.
But God, in his typical humor, went and filled my home with all these skinny boys. Boys who would much rather play yet another round of UNO than snack on Christmas goodies. Boys who have many times been known to stop eating a slice of birthday cake halfway through because they’re “too full.” Boys who will gladly eat their dinner cold if it means they can finish building their Magna-Tile tower first. Boys who truly, thoroughly, could not care less whether their biscuits came from scratch or from the can.
They come by it honestly too. Their father, my dear husband, despite the foot of height he has on me, often eats less than I do. And I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the science behind this one, but more often than not he legitimately doesn’t want dessert?
Don’t get me wrong: they all appreciate a home-cooked meal and are generally complimentary of my cooking. It’s not that they’ve condemned me as a bad cook. Food just isn’t as big of a deal to them as culture had conditioned me to believe it would be.
One might think I would have recognized the small appetite of my collective family from the beginning as a source of freedom—a release from pressure to perform. But for years, to the contrary, this dynamic functioned for me as a source of insecurity. Even with the confident knowledge that Christmas big dinner was exactly what my boys wanted, I felt ashamed to admit that this was my plan to other women I knew would be serving their families great holiday feasts. I felt deprived of an opportunity to prove myself as a competent and capable nurturer—that is, to prove myself as a Good Woman.
The messages I had internalized about what it takes to be a Good Woman all worked from the premise that men and boys are basically just Appetites on Legs—bodies always itching for a hit of physical gratification. The best way to love them, therefore, as a wife or a mother, is to keep their appetites satisfied—to meet them with sensory pleasure and comfort around every turn.
When my boys started saying “no, thank you” to my homemade goodies, it was hard for me not to take it personally. It felt like a little sting of rejection. This was the gift I felt competent to give them—so if they didn’t want it, what else did I have to offer?
I’m sorry to say it took years for me to realize what should have been obvious from the beginning: The things my male family members chiefly want are, well, the same things I chiefly want… Someone to pay attention to their stories. Someone to laugh at their jokes. Someone to celebrate their accomplishments and to share in their interests and joys. Someone to attend to them with grace and truth and to help shoulder their burdens.
My boys are much more than their appetites. And I am much more than a vending machine. I am thankful now to recognize their small appetites not as a rejection, but as an invitation to a higher calling—a calling to show up for them as a friend, a partner, a counselor, and an advocate. To be their Mary instead of their Martha. To step out of the kitchen and into a full and vibrant life of play and conversation.
It turns out, so I’ve found, that most of what it takes to be a Good Woman is simply what it takes to be a Good Person: Be patient, be kind. Don’t envy, don’t boast, don’t be proud. Don’t dishonor others. Be neither self-seeking nor easily angered. Keep no record of wrongs, and delight not in evil. Rejoice with the truth. Always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere. Man can’t live by bread alone; he needs love. And love never fails.