Competitive Snacking

With a day that is finally sunny AND dry, we are going for a hike in South Mountain Reservation with another mother and child pair as hiking companions. Hiking companions are reassuring, given that menfolk were only last month sniping deer to heaven in the reservation. Moreover, the company comforts my lingering urbanite need to socialize-while-being-in-any-sort-of-sunshine.

The last time we went hiking with J. and her daughter J., they had come with a trusty backpack filled with innumerable snacks of the elusive (and thus coveted) kind: goldfish, fruit leather-ish gummies, even chocolate. Since Bean and Lump had eaten lunch prior and we were only envisioning a two-hour hike/dawdle/hangout, I packed dried apricots.

Guess which stash was more popular?

Since J. had not eaten lunch prior, she requested snacks every 20 minutes. My children huddled nearby like tenement children living on the historic Lower East Side. Huddled like masses. Of two. J. and J. took pity on them and handed out shares, which they gobbled up and pretended to look satiated. For two seconds.

In my head I was composing another page of "Poems for the Guilty Mother".

Oh, children,
who look so deprived, starving,
I shall pack every damn thing

in the cabinet
for your next hike, so that
we may not truly hike

but hang around under trees
eating, eating, eating--
dear, sweet, *******
children.