48x48” acrylic, recycled fabric, wallpaper, oil pastel, and grease pencil on canvas

Blue and yellow are my mom’s favorite colors, seen in her kitchen wallpaper, which is collaged into this piece. This is important to note, because although my dad did almost all of the cooking, my mom was the rule enforcer, starting in the kitchen.

There were other rules for dinner time, but the most grating was, before you can be excused you have to take Two Big Bites of everything on your plate.

If you want to eat it all, excellent! If you want to eat none of it, makes no difference! You and Liz D were not leaving the table until you’d taken your bites. There were a lot of nights that I argued and cried, but I’d have grown old and died before she budged.

As an adult hoping to become a parent myself I’ve really been “doing the work” to put myself in the best headspace for leading someone through the world, and I realized how much easier it would have been for her to just give up on those little lines in the sand. But when I say to myself, “the meaningless means more”, I’m talking about two big bites.

You don’t get to shy away from the parts of life you don’t like. You don’t get to put difficulty and failure back in the pot. It wouldn’t happen in life, so it wasn’t starting at the DiSil table. Take your bites and move on! If it’s Lima beans, it’s just gonna blow no matter what…but if it’s baked beans, you might realize they’re fucking delicious. Either way, nastiness will dance in and out of your life and you have to find a way to make your peace with it.