Happy Birthday, Sweet Isaiah

By Jana McNally 2:58PMBlog: Community
Tags: Isaiah, birthday, September 11, vegetables,

There are several people in my life who from time to time will encourage me to write. And though I love vegetables as much and probably more than the next person, I find it a little hard to be inspired by them to write. My best writing, I think, has been the few short things I have written that were inspired by our son Isaiah and so I find I am inspired today, September 11th, 2009, on what would have been Isaiah's twelfth birthday, to write about him and something he loved...vegetables.

I think it started for him with radishes. Radishes first, then peas, salad mix, and swiss chard, the spring crops. Then the joys of summer, corn, tomatoes, especially the little orange tomatoes, Sungolds, his favorite. There was basil which he preferred torn rather than chopped..."with basil torn please" he would say each time, as if there was any chance we would forget his preference (no chance). He liked to have a mess of onions sauteed in butter for a period of time when he was between the age of 18 months and 2 years; he loved roasted garlic smeared on bread with bleu cheese. In the fall it was kale and winter squash and roasted pumpkin seeds.

I remember how I used to feel smug about myself for raising a child who ate so well...all it took, I thought, was to present healthy foods and children would eat them. Wasn't my child proof of that? "No!" must have been our second son Noah's gleeful response as he pushed past the vegetables for the macaroni and cheese that came from a box, who still prefers Amy's Organic Tomato soup from a can over any soup that I make in my own kitchen and who once begged me to follow a Rainbo Bread truck down the street so he could continue to gaze longingly at the "squishy" slices of bread shown larger than life on the side. So I have since realized, it really was who Isaiah was. He loved those beautiful vegetables that he often helped to plant and to harvest himself. We did make them available but he really appreciated foods fresh from the earth, just as he loved the bugs and birds and animals that lived among them.

So Happy 12th Birthday, Sweet Isaiah. We miss you so and your gentle ways.