Health Food 101

I just came back from the health food store.

I like saying that.

The implication is that I eat healthily and know what to buy when I am in there. The implication is that I am a bit of a granola girl, a free spirit, you know, cool...hip.

The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that, while I do own a few pairs of Birkenstocks, I actually have no idea what I am doing in a health food store. I go in there to buy ear cones and tapioca flour to make the Brazilian cheeseballs like they have at Tucano's. The reality is that my eating habits revolve around the following theory: If the preservatives they put in Twinkies give them a shelf life of twenty years or so, and I eat enough of them, it just might mean that my innards will be preserved beyond their normal shelf life.

I have been told that there is a hole in my theory. I have been told by multiple people. I live next door to one and my backyard hooks up with the backyard of another. Bless their hearts, they're trying to help me, I know. And in reality, I do listen. I probably eat better than I think I do...I hope.

But sometimes people who shop at the health food store can be a little condescending about the whole thing. Not my neighbors, mind you. They really only tell me things when I ask them. A few years ago though, I made the acquaintance of some really nice people like this. (They really were truly nice people.) They were doing a whole macrobiotic diet thing (I still don't know what this actually means) and they could never eat anything I offered them. They were nice about it and all but I sensed that they did not approve of my eating habits. I ran into them one day when I was coming out of the health food store.

"Oh...Lisa...wow...you shop here?"

They actually said this out loud...just like that.

"Umm, yes, I do."

"Oh," (I could see them mentally reworking their entire dietary approach to life at this news) "Oh, well nice to see you."

"You too."

Did I tell them that I was just getting the stuff to make cheeseballs?

No, I did not.

I admit I was smarting a little at the stress they had put on "you" so no, I did not make them privy to that information. Need to know basis and all that.

Ha.

Pass the Twinkies.

Choices

My children deserve to know something. It is something that I think I've taken for granted that they knew and that I hope I demonstrate in a hundred different ways in their daily lives but that I don't know if I have expressed in so many words.

It is this.

They are the most important choice I have ever made in my life.

And it has been just that. A choice.

I have worked hard to help them understand that they are responsible for their choices and that there are always consequences. Well, I am also responsible for mine. I chose each of them over every other choice available to me. (And yes, kiddos, there were others.) I continue to choose them. Sometimes in the day to day grind of assuming responsibility for my choices (and their laundry, their feeding, and their general upkeep) I fear that I have not conveyed to them the importance of that choice and I need for them to understand it. Especially my daughters.

I need them to know that I made that choice to have each of them. Knowing that there would be a cost and that I have paid, and continue to pay it, gladly.

I made that choice four times. Conciously, joyfully. Fully aware and cognizant.

And I celebrate that choice.

Every.

Single.

Day.