“I Don’t Eat Purée Anymore”

I contemplated for a long while whether or not I should write out the word “purée” in today’s top headline the way Kina actually said it, which was poo-ray—a substantially much funnier pronunciation—but because it took me two minutes to figure out what she meant when she said this last night, I decided ultimately to go with the traditional spelling.

Kina eats what we eat these days, which is easy when nobody commutes, and we all sit down to identical plates at six o’clock. These days, Kina’s food has actual texture, but she appears to understand that she once ate nothing but smooth pastes. In those days, before Kina had teeth, Laurea and I would cook up sweet potatoes or avocado and blend it into an undifferentiated mush, which Kina would spread with great care all over her face and the walls. I can’t recall when we stopped feeding her purées, though mushy foods were a component of her menus well into her toothy period.

In 2019, Laurea and I would both come home from work at seven, and Kina’s nanny would already have gotten her ready for bed; our job, then, was to sit and read to her, shower her with affection, and put her to bed. I didn’t really appreciate the benefit of the shared dinners we weren’t having, because I didn’t appreciate the cost of staying late at work—it felt like the appropriate thing to do. I valued Hannah’s work in taking care of Kina in the evenings, but I didn’t understand what two hundred and sixty extra dinner hours a year with my kid might feel like. Now I do.

Hard to say what I would have cooked for a two-year-old in 2019. Probably wouldn’t have been the same things we were eating at the time. Might have been poorays. It’s nice to think about now, because we are cooking dinner for her (or at least eating dinner with her) on most nights, and so I feel less (misplaced!) guilt for having not made those dinners. Still, I’m nostalgic for the littler version of her, and for the halcyon days of dinner purées. I think about it sometimes, whenever she complains about my amazing roast chicken. No accounting for taste.

dad

p.s. I swear to god I just realized that the lower right headline is about bourrées. Unintentional. Boo-rays!