The video below is a picture of Rayne eating puffs. This is a fairly new activity for her and one she enjoys a lot. She has developed the ability (finally! as my sister would say) to eat puffs now while also doing other things....such as watching our conversation about minimum wages during this economy.

We spend a lot of time in our society trying to have our children eat well, eat correctly, eat with us, eat new foods, etc.

We don't spend a lot of time in our culture though (I think) talking about what our food means to us once we have the decision to buy and make that food for ourselves. We spend a lot of time sharing recipes, making grocery lists, deciding what foods are healthy and what foods will add to our waistlines but we forget to talk about what food and eating means to us.


Why do we eat? What is the difference between eating alone and eating together? What does it mean to be human-as-consumer? We tend to think of people who ask these questions as gourmands, hippies, or radical foodies but in general I think that one of the most basic activities of our life should continue to make us question throughout our lifetimes. Michael Pollan is an awesome writer and thinker who I follow. I can't or won't always share his practices but I enjoy the way that he pushes my thinking about eating in different ways!

But I want to leave these questions for the moment and share another video of the little niece! The video below is Rayne discovering Balloons for the first time. She had tons of fun with them!

I have two delightful memories about balloons but I'll share only one of them today.

I'm not sure how old I was, I'm thinking about 6) but I remember that my family was eating dinner (or just finishing). We were in the back and all of the sudden there were shouts and screaming from some of the neighbors. I remember my dad calling out "HOT AIR BALLOON" and then I don't remember getting to the front of the house but I do remember all the neighbors converging on our driveway. The balloon was landing right in front of the house -on the street! This is one of those memories where there isn't much sound or color left in my mind. Its one of those memories where you simply close your eyes and there is a picture- a scene almost, as if from a stopped motion picture. I can see the big wooden basket in the middle of the street. I can see the sun setting behind a house on the far right corner behind the basket. I can see lots of small children (I must have been one of them) converging on the ladder to the balloon.

But that's it. The memory stops there. I must have climbed into the basket? Certainly we must have talked to the balloon men? I'm sure that I at least touched the basket? But that's where my memory stops -although I remember being completely amazed by that balloon and I remember thinking that the sky was so big and that the basket looked much bigger on the ground than it did in that big sky.

I wonder how much Rayne will remember of her childhood when she grows up. Will she have a fascination for balloons that she can't explain? Will she have a memory that is simply a splash of color in her mind as she closes her eyes. In any case, I hope, at the very least that she retains memories of wonder and discovery.