I dreamed last night about my little brother, 8 years younger than me. I remember him and always dream of him at 4 years old. He was four when we were separated. I was madly in love with my little brother since the day he was born. Being eight, my mother let me carry him around, feed him, change his diapers. As he grew older, I grew fonder. He was my most favorite thing in the entire world. I’d pimp him off to my friends, telling them that when he was old enough, I’d think about letting them be his girlfriend. But inside, didn’t think any of them would ever be good enough. My little brother was going to be a king.
I miss him terribly all the time, but sometimes, it gets me down. Especially after I dream about him. I was teaching him to swim by using a slide that went into the water. He was terrified of water when he was younger and it took some consoling and cajoling to get him to get close to water. He even hated taking baths. I have pictures of him in the water, his teeth clenched tightly together. Monday morning, I’ll scan in a picture. He’s gorgeous, my little brother.
He lives in New Hampshire with my Uncle (my mother’s brother). I thought that he being with family meant I’d see him. But my uncle and aunt. I don’t understand them. For my college graduation, my brother and his mother (my aunt) were going to come up together. I called two days before the big day to confirm. Yes indeedy. But the day of, they weren’t there. My aunt said that my brother had projects due and wouldn’t be able to make it. They always find some reason. They hurt me all the time and when I see my brother, I can see it hurts him. But they are his parents, and he doesn’t want to resent them. I don’t blame him. But we miss each other. I think about calling him, but it’s so hard. I’m going to start doing it anyway. Every Saturday or Sunday. I can’t sit around anymore. He lives ten hours away by car. It’s a long drive. So when I go home to Vermont, where he’s only three hours away, if I’m home long enough (three or four days), I try to see him. Unfortunately, it isn’t long enough. I miss him.
So when Jon and I went to the diner this morning for breakfast, I was already on the edge of an emotional abyss (excuse the expression). We sat beside a man with his two children. When their breakfasts came over, I was horrified. Not by his meal, but what he fed his children.
He had a “cattleman’s steak,” he called it, with two eggs and about five strips of bacon. His daughter had a huge steak as well with several strips of bacon. His son, couldn’t be more than four years old, had at least 10 strips of back only. I wanted to vomit. First, I wanted to vomit. Then I wanted to cry. I couldn’t look at him, feeding his kids this awful and extraordinarily unhealthy food to his children. It takes years for a child’s stomach to properly digest pasta and vegetables. He was feeding them mounds of MEAT. This wasn’t about the animals. I wasn’t emotional because they were eating the carcass of an innocent animal. I was sick and sad and angry because of the damage he was doing to his children. Meat is the number one cause for heart disease. Men as young as 20 already have formed clogs in their arteries because of meat-based diets. These poor children were being fed 10 STRIPS OF GODDAMN BACON at four and eight years old. It made me feel incredibly awful. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t eat my grits. Jon couldn’t understand what my problem was, but then again, Jon also refuses to read any literature. I think it’s because he’s afraid he’ll see my point and doesn’t want to give something up that tastes good. If he read it, he’s understand. It kills me. It literally hurts my heart to see. It seems equivalent to abuse to me and I can’t control that.
It got worse though when his daughter (I’d say she’s about eight) couldn’t finish her steak. He started calling her selfish, wasteful, and thinking only about herself. “Next time, you can stay home by yourself, how’s that?” I wanted to punch the fucking asshole in the goddamned head. He made me feel worse and more angry and I couldn’t eat a thing. I wanted to burst out into tears. He wouldn’t let up on her. She sat slumped in her chair looking at the edge of the table with a half-eaten piece of bacon in her hand. I knew how she felt: I too was too sad to eat. “Oh, I suppose you aren’t going to eat your bacon now either, huh? So wasteful. Gimme that. Forget it. Don’t eat anything.”
To make matters even worse, turns out our waitress was their mother. She too started in on the daughter about not eating. “What do you want then? Hurry up. I ain’t got all day. Wanna go without? Pick something.” And the father: “Don’t do it. She isn’t gonna eat it. Wouldn’t eat the goddamn steak you got for her or the bacon, let her go hungry. Forget it.”
I wanted to scoop the girl up and hold her and let her know that no matter what her father said, all kids are beautiful and it’s okay if she doesn’t like something. It’s okay to be sad and it’s okay to be angry and it’s okay to know that she’s isn’t worthless or wasteful and conceited.
Jon couldn’t understand why I was so emotional. He told me to mind my own business and I said I was. I wasn’t saying anything to the overloaded prick at the next table. I was telling Jon, my friend, and didn’t feel I had to defend my feelings to him, of all people. It wasn’t just the meat. It was the poor kids. When you eat that much meat, you just get sick and throw up. Jesus! Don’t people learn what’s good and what’s bad for their children? It’s proven that vegetarian children get less infections, less colds, less stomach problems as adults. Babies who start drinking milk get sick but if they drink soy milk, they only become healthy and strong. What is wrong with these people!?!
I don’t want to preach. I’m only trying to write this out so I won’t feel so terrible. Please tell me that even if you aren’t vegetarian, you understand. Or if you are, that you do. Jon understood when the father was being a bastard to his daughter, but not about the breakfast. “A little meat never hurt anybody.” Maybe adults. Or teenagers. But children?
I fear the fights we’ll have when we have children. But I’ll tell you now: I win now on that argument. Before we have children, if he wants children with me, he has to educate himself. He can’t go by what he grew up on. The only reason heart disease is “hereditary” is because families tend to eat the way they grew up eating. It’s the eating habit that’s hereditary.
I feel better. I’m sorry if anybody out there doesn’t agree with me, but as many others have pointed out before…it’s my journal. And this was one of my life experiences.
Some links on health/nutrition information:
Dr. Dean Ornish: Dr. Ornish created a program to actually reverse heart disease. The program is based on an almost vegan diet (vegan means no animal ingredients of any sort).
Vegan.com: On this site, you can download Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating. I read the book myself and it gives great nutritional information.
PCRM: Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine. A panel of doctors who support vegetarianism and veganism, supplying research-based information you can trust. The site linked specifically speaks about health benefits. The entire site is great, and even has a “Vegetarian Starter Pack” (one is also available by PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, though they are far more “radical”).
beam me up, scotty
back up : : index : : moving on
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