It began with the peas

Technically, it began before that, with butternut squash and carrots. But if I had to put my finger on the real starting point, it definitely began with the peas.

I was five months old, and I’d been sucking down formula from a bottle every chance I got. And I got a lot of chances. The bottle was the first thing I looked for in the morning, and I wasn’t going to sleep without one last bottle at night. Daytime was a blur of sights and sounds, endlessly being hauled around in car seats and carriers and strollers. The bottle was my pole star, and my one chance to relax, focus, and do something perfectly. It might have taken me a while to find my feet, but I knew exactly how to take a bottle. So satisfying.

Until the peas.

I’d been noticing that my parents hardly ever seemed to have a bottle for themselves, but they put lots of other things in their mouths. Things that didn’t come back out. When I put things in my mouth, they came back out. But something else was going on when my parents sat down at that table.

I’d been sitting at the table too. I remember the day I got my own chair, a little red Italian number. Very sleek. Hey baby, I thought, you’ve arrived. Toys and stuffed animals, a placemat to bang them on, and bottomless storage off to the sides. What more could I want?

I’ll tell you.

Peas.

One Friday evening my mother started putting butternut squash on my face. Under my eyes, a little on my forehead, and all around my mouth. Some got in my mouth, which was kind of weird. She was using a spoon, but I knew how to help. Between my tongue and my fingers, we did a pretty good job. At least, I thought so.

Next thing I knew, my father had put down the camera and was holding down both of my hands, and my mother was getting more of the squash in my mouth. Ok, so the game is to get the squash back onto my face using just my tongue. Not a problem. I swallowed a bit by mistake, but they didn’t seem to mind.

We played this game for a week. I must have been swallowing too much, because after a week they ran out of squash and switched to carrots. Like I’m supposed to know the difference between orange-colored vegetables.

Another week, and I thought I knew what this was all about. In the mouth, out of the mouth. Get it on my fingers, make some funny faces, and try to dodge that wet paper towel. But I’ll tell you, I didn’t know nothing.

Then came the peas.

I thought maybe it was just carrots gone bad, the way the peas looked. But with the first spoonful, I was hooked. Forget the game! I wanted to swallow this stuff!

I’d guessed that’s what my parents were doing when they thought I wasn’t paying attention. They were eating food. Now I knew why. Because sometimes food is peas.

Well, I’ve had some other foods since then—sweet potato, oatmeal, bananas, prunes—and it turns out they’re all good. Even the squash and carrots were a whole lot better after the peas. But you never forget your first peas. Peas showed me what food could be like. Those perfect smashed-up peas, fresh out of a jar, so tasty you want to wave your arms just to tell them you’ll never forget them.

Until the pears walked onto that spoon and right into my heart.