what goes around comes around

So if you wanted to see a bunch of Sabourin kids wail in anguish and beat at their breasts over the cruelness of a mother who would dare to compile such a vile combination of vegetables and curry sauce and then deem it edible for the whole family, you should have stopped by our house last night around 5:47 pm - at the exact time I was declaring the requirement of taking at least two "polite bites" non-negotiable. Priscilla rallied and then gloated over her talent at being able to down the whole bowl without vomiting. Benjamin wept silently while Elijah tried relentlessly to negotiate (What if I took out just the peas and potatoes and ate the rest?). Mary held the same spoonful in her cheeks for over twenty-five minutes before finally surrendering and swallowing whatever hadn't been drooled out the side of her tiny lips. Troy and I went on dining and conversing like all of this Oscar worthy drama was just par for the course, because...well, it is.

As our parents would gladly (even gleefully) tell you, this is payback time for my husband's and my picky eating tendencies as children. Twenty-five years ago, while my mom was shaking her head at the hissy fit I was throwing over her stuffed green peppers and spaghetti squash and while my future in-laws were pulling over again to the side of a McDonalds parking lot to wait for their son's special order of a plain something or other, I have a hunch they were dreaming of the moment when we would look on dumbfounded at our own teary sons and daughters staring wide-eyed at their dinner, covering their mouths with their hands in horror, and understand fully, apologetically, how trying it can be to come up with meals (besides pizza, of course) that please everyone.

That day, those days, have officially arrived and now here is your prize, Papa and Nana, Grammy and Grampy, for enduring so patiently our maniacal fear of things that were green, things that crunched, things that were mixed together:

From the bottom of our hearts,

WE ARE SORRY.