Sign of Our Times

When our children were young
and adorably stubborn and their
parents adamant that they be
compliant in consuming the
nutritious food served them in
those proportions suitable for
young bodies to thrive, growing
healthy and robust, it took both
their parents' entreaties to convince
them their chiming complaints were
unjustified and unuseful to their
actual needs. Occasionally they
might relent and pick daintily at
the fish, liver or brassica offending
them on their dinner plates, even
on occasion lift a morsel to their
downward curling lips and manage
to gulp them down, with much
encouragement. Adults now, their
tastes encompass mostly what
they long ago spurned, while
those still offensive tastes are
banished. Alone, together at our
dinner table, it is I alone who
remonstrates on those occasions
when our children's father fails
to appreciate those same dinner
offerings rejected by our offspring,
a sign of our less tumultuous times.