It was a normal, everyday childhood summer moment: my son Arie’s first freeze pop. When I handed it to him, his eyes got huge; he’d never before seen anything you could eat this amazing shade of electric blue.
As he tasted it, my heart began to pound.
He beamed. “I like this!” he said, overjoyed, leaning his head back to suck down more of its shocking, sugary goodness.
I puffed like a locomotive and began to see spots. “I have to leave,” I said to my husband Jan. I staggered outside, fighting tears.
“What is the matter with you?” he asked when I returned.
“I just gave my child poison,” I whispered. “My god, I have poisoned him.”
I’ve seen similar reactions from friends who have left strictly religious childhoods: a former Baptist who feels deliciously naughty if she goes dancing, an ex-Presbyterian who tries very hard not to shudder at the sight of saint icons, a recovering Catholic who still—bless his heart—feels guilty about premarital sex.
We try to embrace modern rationality. But certain things we can’t help but feel deep down in our bones.
I was, you see, raised by a Fundamentalist Crunchy Granola.
That’s right: earnestly dry whole-wheat cookies, sweetened with ground-up hope. Plain yogurt. Unhomogenized, unpasteurized organic milk bought secretly from the farmer’s back door. Whole wheat pasta, which is sand held together with brown glue. Fruit juice with the skin and pulp ground up and swirling smugly in the bottle. Enormous handfuls of vitamin pills every night. Carob.
Carob, incidentally, is child abuse. The scars never heal.
We ate these things because they were Good For You. We did not eat sugar, artificial flavors or colors, white flour, meat with sodium nitrate, or preservatives—because they were Poison.
These were the only two categories of food: Good For You, and Poison.
Why, you may ask, did I accept this so calmly? Why did I watch with perfect aplomb while my friends’ parents tried to kill them with Wonder Bread and Twinkies and Kool-Aid?
(Well, I didn’t, completely. Confession: I once shouted in fury and threw rocks at the ice cream truck, because he sold artificially flavored and colored orange Push-Ups and Bomb Pops to unsuspecting, innocent children. Luckily he thought it was funny.)
Besides this one act of outraged fundamentalist violence, I kept my mouth shut. After all, these were the same parents who let their children watch commercial TV and forced them to wear shoes, so I was already hardened to the horrific, ignorant cruelties of the world.
Did it never occur to me to doubt my mother? After all, on more than one occasion growing up, I witnessed a friend take a lick of a Jolly Rancher without curling up and dying of cancer right then and there. However, like any frothing-at-the-mouth fundie, I was unfazed by this evidence.
No, the only rebellion we attempted was in our imaginations. At night, my littlest sisters used to lie in bed, staring at the ceiling and describing in intimate detail the mounds of imaginary candy lying beneath their beds: Snickers, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Now-And-Later, Starburst, Milky Way, M&Ms. They listed off their naughty mantras most nights, drifting to sleep to the murmur of blasphemous contraband.
Although I appreciate this rigid adherence to a healthy diet in some ways (I got my first cavity at age 26, for instance), I have decided for many reasons to try a more relaxed, moderate approach to food with my boys. Although others would find our nearly totally vegetarian diet restrictive, compared to how I grew up, it’s shocking heathenry.
So I try to relax when Éiden has the occasional candy bar, whistle in nonchalance while Arie tries a few sips of Coke from someone’s can at a yard party, smile benevolently, even if I have to grind my teeth, as they both have birthday cake made from a mix. With frosting from a can.
But we can’t completely escape our dark pasts. For instance: You know that truck that makes its way through neighborhoods playing tunes and driving very slowly and hopefully past groups of children?
In our house, when Arie hears the music, just like every child he races happily to the door. But he doesn’t ask us for a dollar; he just waits. Then, he smiles and waves at the very baffled driver as he goes by.
“The Music Truck came, Mommy!” he yells. “Yay! The Music Truck!”
Haddayr Copley-Woods is a Minneapolis writer and mom whose spouse believes she is doing her readers a grave disservice by not mentioning the tree sap “gum,” but she knows no one would believe her.
Reader Comments
Posted: Thursday, August 17, 2006
Article comment by:
Lena
I loved reading this. I associated with it quite a bit too. Growing up I was treated like a bit of a freak by being the girl who didn't drink Coke, eat Captain Crunch and all the other poisonous goodies my friends ate. Later I changed to arts magnet/ hippie elementary school where everyone had Fundie parents. Only the few of us who had been in the real world knew that you were supposed to trade cookie and brownies at lunch time not dried sea weed and the primitive soy products of the time. However my Mother in her not too old age has completely abadonded many of her crunchy granola ways. A friend of mine moved to Korea recently and requested I send her a box of twinkies. I bought them at the local convience store feeling so ashamed that I even explained to the cashier that they weren't for me. No way, definately not for me. I couldn't even look at them without feeling a pang of guilt. I put my bag of shame in my mother's cabinet during a visit and forgot to take them back with me when I left. The next time I came over I discovered almost half were missing and my dear sweet mother who used to yell at people who tried to give me candy and once gave me a very stern talking to for discovering a Walmart shopping bag in our recycling (In this family We Do Not Shop at Walmart. It wasn't mine! I swear!) casually mentioned she'd been eating them, one every day with lunch.
Posted: Thursday, July 13, 2006
Article comment by:
Peggy Howell
Confessions of a food fundie....Lovethis article. It was well written, humorous, interesting and informative. I think the author is displaying great wisdom in bringing balance into her children's lives. Keep it up, girl!
