Boys

I have two sons, ages 14 & almost 12. Last night, we made dinner together - home-made cheese enchiladas, tostadas and chips. It was an adventure - and not just of the 'culinary' kind.

Boys are different. They don't have a lot of 'attention to detail' wired in their brain. B. puts cheese in the tortillas like he's doing the shot-put. A lot of style - and a lot of mess. Cheese EVERYWHERE - he aims for the dish and cheese ends up on the counter 2 ft away. Or on the floor. Crazy.

I turned H. loose w/ the pizza cutter to cut tortillas into chips. He asked 'do they have to be perfect' and my heart broke a bit as I thought 'he's asking that because you are always hard on them about how they do things'. I said 'no, chips are chips and any size/shape will do'. And then the little bugger proceeded to hand me the most perfectly sectioned triangular shaped chips I've ever seen. And he tosses them into the hot oil - with abandon and glee and 'helping'. While I think 'oh my God, please be careful - do you know how badly hot oil can burn you'? And of course they don't because I never let them near the stuff so how could they ever learn.

Parenting is hard. You want them to get hurt so they'll remember and be safe...but you want to protect them so badly that you'd throw yourself in front of train to spare them pain. But if they don't get 'burned' how will they learn to pay attention?

I haven't figured that out yet. I keep over-supervising. But I think we'll cook together more. I'll be grayer, sooner and will need to resist the urge to run screaming from the kitchen - but they will learn. And we'll do it together.

Last night, enchiladas. Soon, the world.