Life of Pie

Malachi is quite the baker.  He can whip up the most decadent brownies you ever tasted.  His analytic mind enjoys taking on a new recipe.  He likes to add his own unique touch, too.  Sometimes I help him, and his efforts turn out pretty well.  Other times I leave him alone, and the results are stellar.  This taught me something.  As much as I want to help my son by sharing what I know, we all invariably receive a better outcome when I leave him alone to let his creativity do its job.  The worst thing that happens is that he asks for my help next time, if his efforts don't turn out to his liking.  It's a process, one in which we get to bond and I get to teach him independence and life- skills, all at the same time.

If you are a girl, you are not allowed to be a messy cook.  If you are a boy, you can leave a mess to rival Chernobyl, and be lauded as a hero.  This engenders some gender hate in me that it ought not.  Consequently, sometimes Malachi does not discern my approbation and approval of his hard work in the midst of all my yelling about the state of our rachet kitchen.  Nothing he does or fails to do will make it better, really.  I just try to keep him aware of the need to clean up behind himself and keep our problems down to the minimum.  To him it just sounds like nagging.

I'm not one of those 'joy of cooking' types.  I gain my pleasure from watching people enjoy the food I've prepared.  This is a nice way of saying that I'm a moody cook.  Depending upon my emotional state, the same ingredients can get you a sumptuous meal or slop pigs would reject outright.  There's a lesson in this

too.  If I could approach meal preparation and life preparation with a little less emotion, my life would be much more manageable.  I could recognize the flashes of intuition that serve me so well without all the background noise that makes them hard to pinpoint.

Allowing Malachi to assemble this here instead of in the kitchen was a major capitulation for me.

What I learn from letting Malachi do his own thing in the kitchen is hard to quantify.  I let him learn on his own.  That's good.  I think he knows that real men feed themselves.  That's good.  What's not as good is recognizing my need to teach him "my way" of doing things.  Even though I know he needs to develop his own mode of living, it took me a long time to learn to do as well as I do with what I have.  I want to teach him all I know about surviving, so it will become the foundation of a life that thrives.  He can't learn how to do more than survive unless I do, too.  He may possess the requisite personality and acumen to achieve a life of abundance on his own, but it'll be a lot easier on him if his mom can marshal her talents into something lucrative, and soon.

Malachi and his brother are going to come of age in The New Millennium.  The world is already a much different place than it used to be.  The way he earns a living for his family may be in a manner I or his grandparents could never imagine.  My sons need to be prepared for this.  Many people in my circumstances have their heads deeeep in the sand about this.  They are not preparing their children to compete in a world they don't understand.  They've given up and are just trying to sustain the quality of life they have always known. Some are letting them wade in deep over their heads, into technology; into adult themes; and into the uncharted territory of the Wild, Wild Web.  Others are like me, a crossing guard with a dinky sign, trying to usher the little ones across a six-lane freeway.   Malachi got on the Information Autobahn at the age of eleven in a Lamborghini, with no license.  Hadn't even learned to DRIVE.  I threatened to freestyle on F**book, and disaster was averted.  I think he has a future blogging for the brands he loves.

Even I will facetiously refer to this as "brand whoring." It's a shocking depiction, but its veracity is undeniable.  Maybe I should stop characterizing it this way.  All I know is that Mali's friends emulate him.  The affluent ones are more socially flexible than before.  The ones on his financial plateau go out for soccer for the first time in their lives, and make a smashing success of it.  Malachi just smiles when I ask him if Tyheim ever had an interest in soccer before they met.  "I don't know, mom.  If I remember, I'll ask him."  READ: "I don't need to know he tried something new because I was doing it first, and neither do you."  So I learned that there's a special kind of humility that natural athletes can have and share.  I also learned that my son has admirable qualities that arise and originate with him alone.  It's up to me to help him translate these qualities into a bright future.  I love being a mom.  It forces me far above and beyond what I might ever accomplish for myself.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.

#FriendsofMalachiMaxwellGlass