When I was a kid, I loved me a good can of Alphagetti: letter-shaped noodles in a thin tomato sauce. I would happily wolf down a big bowl well into my teens; in fact, I had a can for lunch before I took a discovery flight with the local flying club when I was 16. The reason I remember one lunch from decades ago is that I got airsick and threw it up all over the plane—there were letters on the upholstery, the instrument panel, the seatbelt, and the instructor’s tie. (Not a joke. He actually had to change his tie.)
And so when I was grocery shopping last week I picked up a can of Zoodles—the same dish, with animals instead of letters—to show my five-year-old what I liked to eat in the good old days.
He loved it. Big mistake. Now my cherished offspring wants nothing other than Zoodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That’s not an exaggeration, incidentally, that’s a word-for-word demand. Part of me thinks it’s cute, and part of me is affronted that opening a cheap can gets a better reaction than when I spend an hour cooking dinner. But I felt something more than that, and upon reflection I realized that my inner perfectionist has been riled up.
Ever since my wife passed away, a part of me feels duty-bound to be the perfect dad, to make sure that no part of my son’s upbringing suffers for having lost a parent. My wife never expected perfection from me, of course, but she was so great at so many aspects of parenting that I notice the contrast, like a flashing red light, when I miss the mark. And now, happily crunching on carrots at lunchtime has been replaced by a sudden addiction to Zoodles. Flashing red light.
It’s not all bad, though. This is teaching him that it’s okay to sometimes eat for fun instead of nutrition, and how to strike a balance. It’s also something that we’ve connected on, this shared love of Zoodles. I tried some myself for the first time in 20-ish years, and they’re still damn good in an awful kind of way. It was kind of fun telling him the airplane story, and it’s always great to watch him discover something he loves for the first time. And so I’ve decided to cut myself some slack and forgive myself for feeding the kid an imperfect lunch. The red light is flashing a little slower and little more dimly. I’m never going to hit total perfection—does such a thing exist?—so I may as well break out the can opener and enjoy a steaming hot helping of not-quite-perfect.
March 2, 2022 at 1:45 am
I can now sheepishly admit that my cupboard is full of zoodles, just waiting to have a party