Dinner consisted of meat paddies (ground beef and pork), cheese tortellini, steamed asparagus, and sauteed sweet onions and mushrooms.  Mom hooted over the sauté: “Woo-hoo! I just love onions and mushrooms!”  Part way through our dinner television program, I noticed, in my peripheral vision, Mom open her middle end-table drawer and insert her dinner plate.  Gathering the dishes later, I asked her, “Do you want me to get your dinner plate from the drawer?”  Flustered, she reached for the bottom drawer.  “It’s in the middle drawer,” I observed.  She opened the middle drawer and retrieved her plate, empty of onions and mushrooms and asparagus tips, but all the meat remaining.  “I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me,” she said.  “I just couldn’t eat the meat.”  Not to worry, I reassured her—she could eat or not eat what she wanted.

Image by Guilherme Teixeira Guilhermim from Pixabay