My Purple Hayes Daze

First it was Halloween and talk about costumes and trick-or-treating that threw a wrench in my plans to keep Hayes in the dark about Halloween for just one more year–until he’s knowledgeable enough to make the time, effort and expense worth it for me.  Now it’s Thanksgiving and a circulating international dinner sign up sheet is really cramping my style.  But I figured out it’s not the holidays that are driving me crazy.  Actually, it’s Hayes’s school that’s about to make me loose it.  The expectation is that Hayes and his classmates bring a traditional dish to school for a holiday feast in observance of Thanksgiving.

No doubt, I understand how this is relevant and fun for a bunch of preschoolers.  But Hayes is vegan.  And no matter how it turns out, it won’t be a fun feast for him.  Either he will accept everything his friends offer him (i.e., turkey and things made with butter and milk) and I’ll be up nursing his aching belly all night.  Or he’ll be the only kid eating the vegan mac ‘n cheese getting colder and more stale by the minute.  Perhaps we’ll avoid it altogether and make a plan to spend the afternoon watching Spongebob and Avatar rather than attend the international feast at school.

I can only hope I’m not scarring my child for life.  (Who’s kidding who.  Of course I am.  How could this not)?

What do moms talk about when there is absolutely nothing to talk about?  Well, me and my friend Stacey, Kimani’s mom, talk about fish.  And it was a pretty funny conversation…

Stacey: Have you seen the colored goldfish?

Me: What do you mean colored goldfish?

Stacey: They’re selling rainbow colored goldfish now.

Me: What?

Stacey: Yeah, I saw them today.  And Kimani somehow already knew about them.  He was like, “Look mommy, the colored ones.”

Me: Well, how do they make them all different colors?

Stacey: Food coloring, I guess.

Me: Gross!

Stacey: I know!  And you would think in this day in age…

Me: …That they wouldn’t feed goldfish food coloring.

Stacey: Wait a minute…What?

Apparently, even a toddler would have guessed we were talking about Goldfish–the crackers.  However, since fish are not a part of either Hayes’s or my diet, I assumed we were talking about goldfish–the live ones.  Because if you say pork, I instinctively think of a pig laying in the mud.  It’s the vegan in me.

The best part was what Stacey said once the topic had been clarified…

Stacey: Kimani asked if I would buy a bag.  And I felt just like you when I had to tell him, “No, we don’t eat that!”

Hilarious.

image by PETAKiDS.com

Let’s just lay it all out on the table; I am vegan by choice.  And Hayes is vegan because I am his mom.

The decision was simple.  I will teach him to be responsible for what he consumes, for our environment and for the care of animals who cannot advocate for themselves.  And then, when he becomes a teenager and decides to throw all that I have taught him out the window, guilt will eventually drive him back to what he knows is right.  Really, it’s all a mother can hope for.

I must admit, rearing a vegan child is not always easy.  There are those inevitably tricky moments when his friends’ birthday cake is not from a vegan recipe and when Hayes is the only kid stuck with a plate of fries to fill his belly at Chuck E. Cheese.  Those are the moments that I hope are fleeting in his memory.  The ones that will not leave too permanent a mark on his psyche.  And just when I am convinced that it will be years before I will know if he understands it all, a small glimmer of hope:

The other day, he turned to me after a fast food commercial and confidently stated, “We don’t eat that.”

Aaaagh…  The power of brainwashing!