Food, a Fable

Once upon a time there was a father with daughters and these baby girls would joyously eat anything their father laid before them. Food, after all, was a bridge that passed joy between them, something the father saw as the strongest of their physical bonds, and these girls’ appetites were insatiable; they hungered for their father’s love which – even as tiny infants - they sensed he had wrapped tightly inside each morsel he fed them. On his mornings off, when their mother had left for work and this father was the man with the bath and the story book and the walk in the park, these girls, each in their own turn, would giggle and strain to get at the warm oatmeal and whipped bananas or tiny pieces of flaked egg that their father presented to them. A game would be made of the feeding, and as they grew and learned to feed themselves these girls continued to find that playful, simple joy in their meal, creating their own zooming airplane noises and hiding the food briefly before devouring it with a last supper fervor that set fire to the kitchen and warmed the whole house. These girls loved their father that much. And they loved the food he fed them even more because he had nestled his love inside it.

As these girls grew older they continued to see their father’s adoration in the food he and their mother brought home to them. In these cans and boxes and cuts of meat and slices of bread these growing girls saw the affection their father had for their bodies. They knew that all this came from their mother as well, but somehow their father and their food were connected in ways both rapturous and awe-inspiring. This old man was the first man in their lives and they were learning that this food he loved to watch them eat was something powerful that they might somehow use to please him or any man.

One day, when the father least saw it coming, these girls - now well into their teens and rising - started to become more cautious about the food they would accept from him even as they had become more guarded about the shades of his love they would let fall upon the corners of their day. The father had expected that this moment would come when his teenage girls would become distant from him (wiser men than him had told him this was only a matter of time and so he took it like a man). But what he did not know and what surprised him to the point of sleeplessness was how food had become a weapon with which these girls could hold both him and themselves hostage.

It was not that food was something these girls had forgotten about, on the contrary they thought about it all the time. It was just that they had grown into restless young creatures who were being pulled apart by their culture on one hand and their family on the other: their father – their first man - had taught them that food was love even as a sea filled with younger male expectations and glossy consumerism was drowning them in a riptide of perfect bodies they could never become slim or lithe enough to swim against. At night when the bedside light had been switched off and the book he was reading had been folded into a depression on the pillow beside him, the father would toss under his blankets wondering what had gone wrong with his simple plan to simply keep his girls alive with food.

Now don’t think for a minute that the battle these girls had with food was just a battle to stay away from it. No, it took many forms. There were days when one of these girls might eat nothing but grapefruit chased back and forth by bars of dark chocolate, and when questioned on it by their father they would look at the old man with twisted eyes and tell him that some wise doctor had said the grapefruit cut the fat while the chocolate satisfied the cravings of the soul. The father knew all about cravings of the soul but he could only see these as the cravings of a lunatic. On other days, a daughter of his would sit in front of the TV and watch cooking shows from first light to lights out, devouring nothing but this televised food-porn, feeding on nothing but the rays of color emitted from the white mascarpone ice cream and the medallions of pink veal sautéed in a strawberry sauce that seemed to coat and stick to the inside of the screen. Then there were times when all seemed well and one or another of his daughters would cook a meal that would stop the father’s heart with a swell of aromas that took him back to his own childhood, a multi-course feast that she, his daughter, had prepared. But when it came time to eat, the daughter would eat so much as to be out of control, licking the residue from her plate, itching to get at any last crumb she could find, all of this ending when the girl would erupt from the kitchen upon the tiniest look of concern or wonderment from her father. In his aloneness at the table after his wife had left to find and console the daughter, the father would stare off into the dark distance of the night kitchen windows and he would see a baby girl with apple sauce smeared on her cheeks and nuggets of dried cereal stuck to her palms eating mightily with the full power of the woman he still believed she would become.

And ultimately she and her sisters did become that woman. But it took years and miles of patience and a distance that was much closer to the end of his life than it was to the beginning, so that the father was already a grandfather before he knew that his daughters were safe and before he realized what had been wrong with his plan. It was a Sunday morning in early spring when he understood what he would do differently if ever he could do it over again. Now, with another baby girl child sitting in a white plastic high chair in his kitchen, he felt twice blessed - first to have been trusted enough to care for this angel on day as brilliant as this, and second to have the chance to practice once again the feeding of a daughter in the form of this beautiful grandchild before him.

As he prepared his granddaughter’s food that morning, the father thought about what it was he was actually giving to this girl. Yes it was bread dipped in egg, fried into soft toast and then cut into eight perfect squares that the daughter of his daughter would chew admirably using nothing but her two perfect teeth. And yes he was giving it to her with love. But where did this love come from and where was it going and what did it have to do with this food? Something struck the old man hard as he tilted the pan to slide out the girl’s breakfast; struck him as hard as if some cartoon cat had grabbed the skillet from his hand and flattened it against the back of his head with the sound of a Chinese gong.

Cooling the pieces of toast with his own puckered breath, he saw the smile of the child eagerly awaiting it and the father thought of the journey this food would take after he gave it away to her. It would be placed in her mouth, softened by her tongue and the spike of her body’s juices and then pulsed down her throat and into her stomach where its essence would do its part to add substance to her life. At no time on its trip would this food travel through her heart, nor likewise would it visit her brain. And in that thought was the secret that had eluded the father for so many years.

Leaning into his grandchild’s ear, the old man whispered to her, “my love is not this food, darling ...” Kissing her on the forehead he breathed into her hair, “My love for you is love alone and this food is only the food I feed you.” Though she smiled up at him, this baby girl had absolutely no idea what he had said or what he had meant by it. But he knew. As long as he lived he would never again let this child confuse a man’s love with the food she ate or didn’t eat. As long as he could feed himself, he would teach this child to feed herself and others – not out of fear nor desperation nor a need to be perfect or wanted – but to be nourished and nourished alone.

Food, after all, was nothing more than this.