Hope you’re having a great summer and that this book is feeling like an anchor for you in the sea of busy-ness. Here are some of my thoughts on Chapters 3 and 4.
Chapter 3
This chapter is called “Home Plate.” Home is our base (hey, more baseball metaphor!), our foundation, and food is a simple, elegant way for home to continue to be that for us throughout our lives. Beautiful. Food is something concrete in our lives that serves as an anchor for memory and emotion. I’m curious: did this chapter give you a new perception of the phrase "comfort food"? What other things are like this, concrete things that can really anchor us emotionally and psychologically?
Not a question, but man, the talk of guacamole got me wanting to make it more for my girls! I love it so much. (They’re not yet convinced.) Also, I want to try avocado popsicles now! I have made avocado pudding before—my kids weren’t fooled, lol—I wonder if this is basically that, frozen?
This from page 83: "What Nature weaves together allows us to hold on to each other—it is her greatest gift to us. If we are to take our place in her plans, then we will need to gather our children to us and feed them in such a way that the emotions, memories, smells, and tastes intertwine and provide comfort, thus leading them back home to us over and over and over again." Nature is so wise, isn't it? In what other ways have you seen the wisdom of Nature/God in raising children?
The last line of the chapter: "What Nature asks of us, in her silent and gentle way, is to hold sacred our responsibility to put home before the plate." Great way to bring the title of the chapter full circle. (Can’t help but notice good/clever writing when I see it.) What does it mean to you to put "home before the plate"?
Chapter 4
This chapter is called “The Good Provider.” I *so* connected with her story about being in a cooking class in Italy. That would 100% be me and it made me happy that she shared so vulnerably here. This part really made me think of care work in general, how we want it to be straightforward, predictable... essentially, we want a recipe. We're uncomfortable with the messiness, of accessing intuition, changing our minds with new information, stepping into new seasons without a plan but with trust that we will figure it out as it comes, etc.—all the things that genuine care/relationship involves. Does this resonate with you? Did you release that desire for a parenting “recipe” as you had more children?
Such great questions at the top of p. 90. I love that she started with an examination of the family meal, and that she talks about how the benefit of the family meal is correlational not causal. "What do we need to understand about the families who eat regular meals together?” she asks. Did your family eat together regularly? If so, do you feel you experienced benefits, and were the benefits from the gathering to eat the meal itself, or from the pre-existing relational context that enabled the shared experiences at the table?
This chapter made me think of what a dance good leadership is… it's not they command what they will eat and you acquiesce, but it also isn't you decide everything unilaterally without taking their preferences into consideration. Listening to your people is a part of true/good leading.
That Simone Weil quote on p. 97: "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." Oof. I loved the part that follows, bottom of page 97 onto page 98, especially the last part about inefficiency. Big resonance for me. I’ve had the thought many times in my parenting journey that the modern quest for efficiency (and, related, productivity) is at the heart of why parenting goes wrong. Care work isn’t efficient. Making a meal for your family isn’t particularly efficient. It’s not meant to be. Does this resonate for you? How have you rebelled against the cult of efficiency to parent well?
Leave your thoughts below, and remember my thoughts above are just a jumping off point to use if you want! Feel free to share any and all connections, questions, or reactions that came up for you!
"We have been looking at the family meal from the wrong angle. We need to consider how we can cultivate deep connections and gather our loved ones *before* we eat. We need to *prepare* and make them receptive to our gifts of food before we offer it to them. We need to *harness* their desire to be close before we tell them to come eat with us. The family meal—and eating together—serves us best when it is a celebration of the relationships that come before it. We need to turn the table on the family meal and see it as the fruit of our connection, not the birthplace of it."
I realized I forgot to comment on "cascading care" and the very last section of chapter 4, which was just absolutely beautiful wasn't it? The last paragraph of the chapter was just... wow. "When we serve as a caretaker to others, we are also taking care of our needs." "Loving someone may not change them, but it surely change you." Oof! That's some deep truth.
#5 - I was so there with my first and even second baby. Now I see that care is waaaay more like an intuitive dance than, like, a manual. This doesn't mean there's no planning or intention; it just means that it's a totally different paradigm from which to approach the work. Someone I know is pregnant with her first baby, and she's eating up the writing of Emily Oster, an economist who talks about parenting. I get it. I devoured Emily's first book, and now she has like four, all analysis of data so modern parents can make "informed" parenting choices. It's just a whole thing, this desire for what exactly to do, what are the "best" ways, etc. Probably a whole forthcoming essay now that I'm thinking about it...