First Ice Cream

Baby had her first ice cream tonight. For reasons that made sense at the time, my wife and I elected to break our sugar fast and we also elected not to be hypocrites – to allow our beloved child to try something that various family members have begged us to let her have for months. Mostly, baby screwed up her face in response to the cold, the sweet, and, perhaps, the artificiality of it all. She looked cute with a ring of chocolate around her mouth. And, for a few moments, I thought we probably seemed like a pretty relaxed American family sitting around a blond-wood table with alloy-metal legs in an upscale ice cream parlor. And we probably were. But we also were kidding ourselves that the family bloodline, on either side, tolerates sugar normally. And, thankfully, our fifteen months of effort to create a healthy relationship to food on baby’s part appear to have meant something, when push came to shove. She’ll make her own choices, eventually; we just want the fish to know something of water – as unlikely as it may be.