Distracting from the now…

“I never look back, dahling… it distracts from the now” –

I was thinking about it today. I take so much time to write in the now. I never have time to jot down the stories of the past that I think are meritous of a story telling. I’m so busy living today, that yesterday’s stories seem to go a little by the wayside. Today was pretty much a waste of a day… so I thought I’d tell a tale of yesteryear. But I can’t seem to decide what story to tell at all. I had thought of what I wanted to write about earlier, but now I draw a blank. I could tell tales of debauchery… but this is neither the time nor the blog for it *wink*. So I’ll keep it tame.

Why I don’t drink milk
Those folks who’ve known me the longest know that I don’t. And most of them also know why. So now I’ll share with the blogging world (no… nothing really did happen today).

When I was 4 years old, I was still drinking from a baby’s bottle. It was my favorite bottle in the world. It was shaped like a little brown bear with a honey jar and it had the bottle nipple for his hat. Every day around 3:00, my Granny would whip up this wondrous concoction of carnation milk and SUGAR and she’d warm it up just right on the stove (prior to microwaves) and serve it to me in my bottle. But I had to go ask… in french:

“Granny, je veut du lait, bien chaud, bien sucre et dans mon biberon, s’il te plait?”
(translation: Grandma, I’d like my milk very warm, very sweet and in my bottle, please)

It was just the routine of the day for me to do so and in french since that was my first language. Grandma would get to cookin’ it up and I’d be playing on the floor or sitting in a chair. It was too early for my brother to be home from school yet and those were a couple of lonely years for me when he would go off to school and I’d be stuck at home. My brother was my ace… I rarely ever did anything without him and had become quite masterful at tagging along by the time I was 8 or 9. So, when the bottle was ready, Granny would bring it out to me and I’d race to jump and lay behind my mom on her bed with my head resting on her hip (imagine us spooned but I was just behind her legs) while she watched Edge of Night my mom’s favorite soap opera. And out of sheer itis and security, I’d fall asleep right there till my brother came home from school.

So on this fateful day, it was the same routine, or so I thought. I put in my order… went to play while it was being prepared. Granny called me into the kitchen and mom was standing there with her. They looked like they were both getting ready to tell me something deep. So the three of us stood there and mommy began (this conversation in french). “You know you’ll be starting school soon, because you’re a big girl…” I nodded. She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know already. “And there will be other big kids there with you in kindergarten… and the big kids don’t drink from a bottle when they have their milk…” I remember thinking to myself… “I don’t care what the big kids do. That’s their business. I want my bottle.” I started glancing around the room for signs of the bottle. I saw the milk on the stove… I saw the tub of sugar laying on the counter…??? where was my milk? Then my mom produced it. A light blue cup… filled with my precious lunch time snack. And I looked at it and looked at her and looked at granny and was like… Okay… stop playin… where’s my bottle. I had a love affair with my baby bear bottle. It was my friend and I associated it with fulfillment and contentment. And now they were trying to take it away. We bargained for what felt like hours. I wasn’t relenting. I could have been a lawyer back then. My logic was flawless. NO and NO because I like it in my bottle and NO. Finally, frustrated, my grandmother poured the now cold milk into my baby bear bottle which she hid in the cupboard. All of this deception… all of this trickery AND now my milk isn’t even warm. I turned away from it and never went back. I was devastated.

Even now, if I try to drink milk straight, I gag. It’s so ingrained in my thought process to hate it that I can’t stomach it at all.

My earliest memory… and attempt to keep blogging every day 🙂

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