For Dessert: Leave the Desert
The Christmas I was 11 we had plum pudding for dessert. I hated it with a passion normally reserved for the brussels sprouts of the world. But worse… like brussels sprouts served with three unrepentant kicks in the groin. That’s How Much I Hated It.
I had smelled it cooking in the kitchen for some time, and while my face soured at the malodorous malevolence, never did I imagine my mother would announce I Would Have To Eat It. I don’t know in what pugnacious Parental Parliament such an edict was passed, or why, but apparently it was deemed an essential part of the perfect picture of Christmas as my mother would have it. Everyone would have a piece, Whether They Liked It Or Not. The brunt of the proclamation was delivered in my direction, so I immediately understood “everyone” meant me.
When the steaming, mealy bowl of dread was placed before me, my throat reflexively cinched in rebellious rebuke. I knew I could not eat it. A desperate, begging glance toward my mother’s granite gaze revealed to me all I needed to know. Our relationship was an ongoing power struggle, and, for whatever reason, this was a battle she was not prepared to lose.
“You may not leave the table until it is finished.” I mentally reconfigured the wood of the dining room table into an over-sized coffin. At that moment I would have returned all of my presents if only I could escape my bowl of suffering, for my lifelong greatest phobia, from the age of two, was throwing up.
For the next two hours, under my mother’s steely sentinel, my best strategies failed me. I nibbled one molecule at a time. Particles so small that my throat and stomach might be tricked into thinking, “What is this airy wafer of delight? Surely not plum pudding! Indiscriminate nano-matter perhaps? Flecks of inhaled dust maybe?” But no. I knew. So they knew.
When my mother finally went upstairs on an errand, I wrapped it all in a napkin and quietly hid it in one of my insulated winter boots in a foot locker by the front door. When she returned a minute later, I made a big production of having just swallowed it, almost unswallowing it, and then being resentful about it all. The histrionics were enough. My mother’s sneer of triumph told me I was safe. It worked. Almost. Five days later, as we were leaving to visit relatives, it was discovered. In childish Christmas reverie, I had long since forgotten about it, but there it was. Unbooted. Moldy, rubbery, congealed plum pudding on a greasy napkin on the floor in front of the foot locker. I felt like I was looking at my own rotting corpse.
My mother was furious. Livid! She stepped forward to hit me then stopped. What she said next was worse. “That’s OK, You Will Eat It Now.” Triumph had made its grisly return.
The long car ride to the relatives remains a blur. I don’t know why I didn’t throw the pudding out the window into traffic, but I must have been too frightened of the consequences. So I ate it. Every last molecule. Upon swallowing the last bite I made my own announcement to the family. I was about to throw up. As I spoke these words, my mother turned from the front seat and again smiled in merciless triumph.
I was telling this story to a close friend this afternoon, and had to stop repeatedly because recalling it made me feel sick, and because I was forgiving on the fly. As I got to the end of the story I swallowed hard, my face contorted in nausea, and spoke of my mother’s terrible smile of triumph. Then the unexpected happened. I heard myself pause and add, “…which was really my moment of triumph. I had successfully given my mother the mantle of my malevolence. And it was my guilt at having done this to her that made me so nauseous.”
As I said the words, my mind returned to that moment in the car when my mother turned to look at me. Her face was still harsh, but now appeared neutral to me. I knew her scorn had nothing to do with me, and as my judgment disappeared all I could hear was her call for love. In that moment my nausea evaporated. My face softened. My mind was quiet. And plum pudding was finally just plum pudding again.
