serious faces

My mom is a vegetarian.  She always has been, she tells me, even though I know that’s a stretch.  At a spritely five years old, my mother stopped eating the flesh and innards of other living beings.  She said she didn’t do it because of religion, but because she genuinely didn’t like meat, my grandfather told me once.  He used to make meat soups, and feed her the broth, or cut them up into little peices in her vegetables, thinking he was being sneaky.  He said my mother could always tell, and would start crying.  That didn’t stop him though.

I have tried to become vegetarian many times in my life, and all of them have failed.  I can keep it up for a few months at a time, but eventually my body craves protein in large quantities.  I could get it from lentils, I suppose, but i never was a fan of them.  Truth be told, I, too, don’t like the taste of meat, most meat smells bother me significantly - seafood and pork especially.  Everytime I tell my mom I am becoming vegetarian, her father’s genes whip out and she starts trying to sneak them into my mouth by always leaving some prepared in the fridge.  A growing boy your age needs protein she says.

She killed a squirrel once, and I always thought of that as the most ironic thing.  We were on our way to the temple on a cold Sunday morning, just me and her, and on the way out of the neighborhood, you could feel the slight bump as we passed over him.  I turned around, looking out my window, telling her what it was, and she had a completely serious look on her face as she said, “Don’t tell anyone.”