Broccoli

"But, Anne" my uncle asked looking quizzically at my mother across the dinner table as we ate, "you hate broccoli."

My mother was strangely upset by this. She pointed at me and said with a raised voice, "I've been eating broccoli all her life to set a good example for her, and telling her that I like it, and smiling through the whole thing."

I remember being approximately 10 at the time and thinking that that was a silly way to go about things. If my mom really wanted to teach me a lesson about healthy eating she should have told me that she hated broccoli but ate it anyway because she knew it was good for her. I thought that would have been a lot more relevant a lesson for me, given my mother's cooking. The whole of it wasn't a very big deal to me though.

At this point I remember being woken from my thoughts by a significant shouting match between my mother and my uncle. Looking over across the table I saw my two cousins who were present, my brother Isaac, and my infant sister, all of them younger than me. I was thinking that this was somewhat of a silly thing to get so upset about, and that this probably constituted a far worse example than having a personal distaste for vegetables. I guess it takes a hell of a bratty 10 year old to be mentally condescending to adults, but I've never been a particularly nice or polite person anyway.

The next day we had the bane of my existence: freeze dried peas with carrot cubes, corn, and lima beans. I suppose none of those items would be so terrible of themselves, it was more they had been frozen together in one bag and the soupy water which emerged from the microwave reheating process and coated everything. It always tasted to me just like too many colors of paint mixed together looked: not unlike puke. I was careful not to protest, seeing as my mother had apparently suffered for 10 years with broccoli and was quite bitter about it, I figured my requests would fall on deaf ears.

The day after that was broccoli again but my mother had a bowl of the leftover frozen vegetable mishmash. I remember getting caught glancing at it.

"I don't have to eat broccoli because I don't like it," my mother snapped defensively.

My grin must have given me away as I eyed her bowl eager to file away that logic for the next meal I didn't like. She puffed up like a cat or a bird trying to look bigger than it is and glared at me a little.

"I can do that because I'm an adult."

That is, for the record, one of my least favourite excuses ever.

My mother is still very bitter that my uncle ever let on that she doesn't like broccoli. So bitter in fact that I have, on numerous occasions, forgotten that this incident ever happened only to later be reminded of it when my mother complains about it. I'm probably not going to ever understand that.

I cook with broccoli from time to time now, but it is always in something. Stir fry is the usual candidate for this. My mother always served the broccoli plain and soggy from steaming, not even with butter. This is another thing I'll never understand. Almost all vegetables can be dressed up and made tolerable if you put the effort in and can stand spices. Perhaps the fact that we ate everything plain in my house growing up has something to do with my brother, or perhaps mom never really learned to cook. Maybe its a little of both.

The steamed broccoli on the stove looked odd today at first and I stood there for a moment staring at the chunks, almost not recognizing what they were, before adding a portion to my bowl.

"I don't think I have had broccoli in years," I said, "like I think last time I had it was high school."

Magpie looked up from his bowl, "You don't like it?"

"Nah, its alright. It probably just says something odd about my eating habits."

"Pretty sure I've had dishes where you cooked it."

"Guess I haven't eaten it plain in some time."

Oddly enough the broccoli was probably the highlight of the meal. Its not to say Magpie can't cook: far from it, it is simply that I have been eating almost exclusively sandwiches and things which can be ordered via phone for delivery to my lab for the last week. At some point the grease just gets to you. You miss fresh fruit and vegetables. Sometimes you don't even know you miss them until you have them again. Apparently I missed supposedly boring, flavorless, steamed broccoli enough to go back for seconds on it.

Everybody always says that as you get older you grow more like your parents. This is a concept I'm uncomfortable with on many levels. Somehow, in that sense, I find eating plain broccoli, (which I find a bit boring and slightly unpleasant but quite tolerable) very comforting. Its purely symbolic and has no real bearing on anything. However, its one of those pleasant reminders that we are all individuals with wills of our own to be what we choose to be, and not necessarily victims to the same shortcomings as our parents, or mindless automations crafted by our circumstances.