My 14-Year-Old Made A Decision That Should Have Delighted Me. Instead, I Found Myself Grieving.
A few months ago at a truck stop on a summer family road trip, my 14-year-old son announced that, after five years of being vegetarian, he would start eating meat again.
I nearly spat a mouthful of 7UP across the table.
“What?” I asked, soda dripping down my chin. “Why?”
My reaction surprised him.
“Doesn’t this make your life easier?” he asked. “I thought you would be happy.”
I thought I would have been, too. As an omnivore, I had dreaded cooking two dinners every night after he declared himself a vegetarian. At the time, he was 9 years old. I chalked his decision up to the chaos we all felt at the beginning of a global pandemic — the sense that the ground beneath our feet was crumbling. I figured the first time he smelled bacon sizzling in the oven, his conviction would dissolve.
But that is not what happened. Instead, he sniffed the air and rather piously declared that he loved animals too much to eat them.
While I’m happy to serve as our family cook, feeding a 9-year-old vegetarian wasn’t in the job description. I suppose I could have played the “as long as you live under my roof” card, which many parents do.
But when I looked into the eyes of a young boy sincerely trying to use what little autonomy he had in the world, I didn’t have it in me to say, “Too bad, kid. You get what you get.”
He clearly wasn’t going vegetarian to exert control or to make dinnertime hell for me, my husband and our daughter. I’d seen kids pull such stunts before, but this was different. He wanted to live according to his values. I admired that.
And although he could make himself a quesadilla, scrambled eggs or pasta, if he was going to eat anything besides pale foods, it would be up to me to cook it.
At first, my shopping list included lots of tofu and plant-based, meat-like products. I became obsessed with weaving protein into my son’s diet, constantly pushing almonds on him like I was selling knockoff watches from inside a trench coat. During lockdown, when he spent 99% of his day at home, it felt imperative that I personally compensate for whatever he lacked on the food pyramid. Fortunately, he was game, although he drew a hard line at eggplant and squash — no matter how well they were seasoned, employed or disguised.
As he grew older and COVID-19 loosened its grip on our lives, my son’s meals increasingly took place between or en route to basketball games, music lessons and rehearsals for the school play. In recent years, he has consumed so many trays of Trader Joe’s frozen chana masala and black bean taquitos that I live in fear of their discontinuation. On occasion, my husband and I would give him $20 to walk downtown for dinner with a friend. Once, he spent it on a giant bucket of buttered popcorn; another time, two scoops of gelato. Aloud, I told my son that these weren’t the kinds of “meals” for which we provided cash. Secretly, though, I rejoiced in not having to cook for him those nights.
Parenthood is riddled with such paradoxes. I want what’s best for my kids, but what I’m able to do for them is limited. I want control, but responsibility? Not especially. From what I can tell, a child’s sense of agency lights up between the ages of 9 and 13, like a meteor blazing through the ozone layer toward Earth. As parents, we can try to adjust the angle of its impact, but at a certain point all we can do is brace ourselves.
Sitting at the truck stop restaurant that day when my son said he wanted to go back to meat, I saw a boy on the precipice of manhood. He still had the round face of a child, but he’d grown taller in recent months. When I had laughed and grabbed his arm that morning, I felt an unexpectedly sturdy bicep. But when I caught him yawning in the rearview mirror that morning on our road trip, his mouth formed the same shape as that of the infant in my arms 14 years ago.
Yes, his decision to eat meat would make my life easier, and I told him as much. But I grieved the loss of the earnest little guy who wanted to protect the animals. That part I kept to myself.
We left the restaurant and walked into the parking lot, my son’s eyes meeting mine as we opened car doors across from each other.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said, squinting against the sun’s reflection on the roof of the car. “What made you decide to eat meat again?”
He stood holding the door open for several moments, thinking deeply, I assumed.
“I don’t know,” he said at last, with a shrug. “I guess I just wanted to.”
I considered pushing for more information. After all, aren’t the words “I don’t know” the most predictable deflection a teenager has? Surely there was more to it, but he spoke before I could press further.
“Are you mad at me, Mommy?” he asked.
“He still calls me Mommy,” I thought to myself. Even though he tries not to, even though all his friends call their mothers “Mom,” even though I’ve told him change is OK.
I took in his unruly curls and open, guileless face. This was no deflection, I realized. He was asking for my blessing.
I held my breath, then exhaled — the sacred sigh of every mother forced to remember, once again, that time marches on.
“Nope,” I said, smiling to reassure him. “Not mad at all. I’m glad you’re figuring out who you are.”
He grinned back at me and nodded, then sunk into the backseat, pushed his earbuds in and closed his eyes for the long ride ahead.
Jaime Lewis writes about food, drink and travel for publications including the Washington Post, Life & Thyme, ITALY Magazine, Fathom, VIA Magazine and Vegetarian Times. As a podcaster she hosts “Consumed,” a show that made the top 40 most-downloaded food and wine podcasts in the U.S. Named a fellow at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in 2018, Jaime was also awarded a residency at The Wellstone Center in the Redwoods in 2023. She lives with her family in San Luis Obispo, California.
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