vegetarian mama, omnivorian family: torture-by-tempeh or sausage party?

I am a vegetarian. Not to save the animals, and not to save my body, although both of those pursuits are perfectly good reasons to forgo a Halifax donair. I just happen to like a peaceful plate, as well as one that doesn’t have every orifice emitting the funk of the underworld for a week.

But I’m also a Maritimer, and tasked with feeding two boys and one man who would dance naked with their arms upturned and mouths open if the sky rained sausages. Which means that I am 1) bound by provincial legislation to crush lobsters with my bare hands and suck the seawater out of their furry wee legs regardless of how I feel about meat; and 2) forever doomed to cook two separate dinners nightly...

Click here to read the rest of my first post at the new Canada Moms Blog, where I'll be writing once every couple of weeks. Why? Because we have to stick together. For the sake of universal healthcare, Cuban all-inclusives and superior twizzlers.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

why are twizzlers superior? I'm an american twizzler fan (not Red Vines).

[sweetsalty kate]

It's one of the great mysteries. I've tasted the american ones and they're different. Who knows why. It's one of the great secrets of the north. Perhaps because each Canadian twizzler is handcrafted, rolled into a twist on the thighs of nubile young canucks.

Yeah. That's it.

[EJ]

Maybe you can tell them that if they dance naked with their arms upturned and mouths open sausages will appear. Will at least give the neighbors something to talk about.

[tanya]

LOL! you are so cute!

no, but really ... are they that much better?? (the twizzlers)

[Lani]

hilarious. i was a veg till i got pregnant. well, i called myself a vegaquarian b/c i couldn't live without my seafood. then i got all pregnant and worried about mercury and didn't eat it and craved the protein and the rest is history. i am a full on carnivore, though i don't do cow. and i like it! i almost can't remember what it was like to not eat meat. i am all about the organic, local and humanely treated animals. but i totally hear ya. i hate the idea of suffering animals. almost more then suffering humans!!! how crazy.

[Woman in a Window]

ummmm, yes, for the cause of twizzlers...

[Amber]

The kids and I are vegetarian, hubby is not. The kids are because I was before they were born, and if I'm in charge of feeding them, I'll feed them what I'm eating. Dinner is meat (for hubby only), starch, vegetable. The kids and I eat the latter two. When we have spaghetti, my husband puts sausage on top. We simply don't make things like casseroles with meat in them. We're happy because it's what we're used to (we don't know any better!). I also try to never make anything special for the kids only, 'cause that only complicates the process.
My kids have been told that they don't eat meat because they don't eat animals. My son (4.5) has expressed a curiosity about the taste, and one day, I'll let him indulge.
I'm sure lots of parents disagree with how I'm parenting, but we simply can't agree on everything--we all parent differently.

[maggie]

i was a vege for years before i was pregnant and then i was too worried about
nutrition and not getting it right... now we eat fish and open range chicken.
congrats on expanding your writing reach.

[margie]

ahh, i love me a bit of halifax. not to mention i could hunt around dal and find him and give my big baby boy a hug!!

[crazymumma]

I personally do not think it fair that a woman who writes as beautifully as you do can also have me laughing. it is just not a fair world.

will go over and read your gig.

[Betsy]

Kate - here's a question. Don't you think if you taught a writing class you'd have to break all the rules? Whatever happened to "no sentence fragments" and "never start a sentence with 'and'?" I'm curious b/c you're a great writer with an expansive vocab.

[sweetsalty kate]

Betsy, that's hilarious. Me teaching a writing class (gulp) would be something like this: "Hey! That sounds COOL. Don't know why. Good work."

:)

[Betsy]

Ha - I knooooow! Because of some work I'm doing now I've been introduced to Writing and Language Arts books. The samples are seriously some of the worst stuff I've ever read. Pure irony.

[teahouseblossom]

Wonderful how your post made me simultaneously want to become a vegetarian AND crush a live lobster with my bare hands!

[mfk]

Hey Kate,
so about this funk of the underworld... I was just curious, do you really feel like you smell different after you eat meat? I have never noticed that and have eaten meat/ not eaten meat at various points in my life. Maybe it has something to do with different types of metabolisms? anyway just wondering.

[sweetsalty kate]

Hey mfk... I'd only smell different after eating a Halifax donair. A rhino in a heat wave would stink of nothing but garlic after a Halifax donair. Halifax donairs are excellent vampire protection.

So no, that wasn't so much about the meat. Since going vegetarian I'm more insufferable, but I smell the same. But you might not want to trust my opinion of myself. You could ask Justin how I smell and then he'd say something snarky and then there would be marital strife and it would be ALL YOUR FAULT.

(grin)

[mfk]

aha, the vampire protection. gotcha. I wouldn't want to cause any marital strife... so I'll just assume for the sake of argument (for the sake of no argument?) that Justin would liken your scent unto that of a dew-kissed rose on a summer morning :)

[ells]

This I write sheepishly, reluctantly. I’ve loitered here for a few days but have never commented before, having read through your story from the beginning not the front, and just now sitting down to think just how exactly this comment will go. I’d been avoiding, you see. And now, because you have two—three—beautiful boys and things to do in your pumpkin-coloured home, I’ll cut the egocentric preamble and get to my point.

It shames me to say I don’t know what to say to you. I loiter in the back alleys, feeling fraudulent. I have yet to be ‘hit by the mack truck of mamahood’, though when the time comes, I’ll be by the side of the road, waving my arms and jumping up and down, holding my breath and stressing over when to hurtle into the middle of the street as it lumbers by, dispensing raffle tickets. But if I have anything to say about it, there will be a collision in my future. I hope beyond hope that my ticket number matches up with a nose to wipe and a rump to pat, but with my own mama’s history I worry the chances are high that brakes will screech and tires will squeal and the driver will feel the inevitable 'thump-BUMP' but shrug and think 'pigeon' and drive away. And I will lie in the middle of the road reading a slip of paper saying ‘sorry, try again!', with a broken leg, feeling my heart shatter and possibly also my mind, to complete the trifecta.

And so I lurk, uncertain, doubting that silence is better misguided words but unsure of how to say what I want to. I’m the annoying, innocent first grader expected to pay two bucks but who can only scrounge up a few quarters, and crashing the sixth grade’s field trip to boot. I can only hope that nobody pulls me out and demands WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? YOU DON'T BELONG. COME BACK WHEN YOU’RE ALLOWED.

I don’t know what to say, how to word what I so desperately want to articulate without sounding false and trite. ‘I’m sorry your son died’ just doesn’t work. I was almost relieved to arrive late; convincing myself I was temporarily exempt from offering my measly coins to the memory of your son. In truth I can’t say much, having no way to begin to relate, no sympathy to proffer, no nods to give. I don’t want to belittle your son by pretending to understand, but I fear (no, I know) it would be worse to stay silent, to not even try.

So, amazing, wonderful Kate, know that my previous silence was not out of cowardliness but out of quiet determination. I have always intended to comment but I didn’t want to be like the babyless or the baby-safe-in-hand who nod and cluck but shrug inwardly and sigh ‘at least it’s not me’.

I do nod, and I do cluck, and I do shrug inwardly. But I can’t say ‘at least it’s not me’ because it very well may be, and I know that. And if it is me, well... I’ll reintroduce myself as a scar-carrying member of the babylost sisterhood, and shrug, and nod, and step into the warmth here like one who deserves to.

Please accept my ignorant murmurings of--
I am so sorry.

[ells]

Um, 'than' misguided words, obviously. Oops. (is sheepish)

[sweetsalty kate]

Aww, ells, that's so kind. Don't ever feel out-of-place of fraudulent or strange to loiter. Loitering is cool. But saying hello is cooler though. I'd never pull the first grader out of line for anything other than a squish. And who knows. I'm a sixth grader only in a few ways that you see here. In any number of other circumstances, I might be the kid.

'I'm sorry your son died' is never false or inadequate. It's all there is, really, and it's never anything but thoughtful and welcome. Inward shrugging is what we do because we're human. There are all kinds of turns of fate of others that make me shrug inwardly. It doesn't mean I have any less regard or sympathy for someone with cancer, or for someone who's been abused. It just means I feel ... well, the way you've described in your comment. Somehow ill-equipped and unsure of what to say or feel.

As strange as it sounds I don't read back often, and sometimes forget the trauma that lies in wait for anyone who starts here and goes backward. Which makes me sad and apologetic and all kinds of mixed-up. But then someone like you pipes up two years later to say "I'm so sorry" and it doesn't make the trauma fresh again... it makes the memory of what this space did for me fresh again.

Which is a wonderful and honourable thing. So thank you, and many blessings at you for your very own mack truck and everything else that waits for you in a good life.
xo