ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS

Driving my daughter to school is on most days a pleasure I wouldn’t trade for the extra 20 minutes of sleep I could be collecting.  Most mornings are great.  The conversation is lively and encouraging.  It’s time I appreciate as I realize our hours together are short now that she is in her second year of high school.  Of course sometimes we’re both too grumpy to speak, and that is fine too.  But this morning’s commute was something else.

For approximately the last 6 months, my daughter’s sensitivity to the life around her has caused a change in my cooking and grocery-retrieval patterns.  Aching for the environment and simpatico to all living creatures, Aubrey made the decision to become a vegetarian.  Not an easy transition for me as I am married to a meat and potatoes lover and now have to feed them both.  This has been an occasional struggle for her too, as nobody appreciated a cheeseburger more than Aubrey.  But she has maintained firm in her position and done quite well.  She’s even somehow convinced herself that tofu is edible.

The drive.  Coming to an intersection this morning, Aubrey noted a bird.  It was your garden-variety, seed-eating type of bird, nondescript but for its chubby breast.  It was wandering around with tiny little steps, right in the middle of all the turning traffic.  “A bird!”  Aubrey’s concern was palpable.  Hoping the ill-advised bird would turn to its wings for solution, I turned left and tried to think of the reassuring words with which I would console my 16 year old daughter’s bird-inspired distress. 

But there was no time to ponder those words because the first vehicle waiting in line at the stoplight was a truck.  And the truck was filled with cows.  I’m afraid the cows were not on their way to a picnic.  “Cows Mom!  Oh my gosh, they’re so cute! Oh, it’s so

sad….I’m glad I’m a vegetarian.”  And before we could recover from our bovine sighting, lo and behold, a truck filled with pigs was immediately following.  We were at that point five minutes away from Hatfield Meats and there was little doubt where the pig truck was headed.  Aubrey’s anguish was written all over her as she worried for the wellbeing of her pink skinned little friends.  In a disastrous turn of events, the traffic had slowed enough for Aubrey to get a glimpse of one particular pig.  The pig was resting his chin on the back of another pig and looking wistfully in Aubrey’s direction.  Very Charlotte’s Web-like.  Eye contact was made and any remaining serenity in our car went out the window.  “Oh no!  The pigs!  Mom, I can’t stand it, did you see his face?”  The tears began.  These were not tiny eye-moistening tears, but great drops of rain now falling down her cheeks and threatening to ruin her painstakingly applied make up .  While trying to catch the moisture with Kleenex and maintain some kind of decorum for being deposited at school in only minutes, her anxious monologue persisted.  “I am NEVER eating meat again!  That pig was so adorable. Oh my WORD, I was thinking about eating pork roll yesterday and I’m so glad I didn’t!” 

Her worry was heartfelt and pathetic, yet I burst out laughing.  I couldn’t help it.  Please understand, if I allow myself to think about it, I would never eat meat again either, but it was so hard to maintain my sympathetic murmurings when she started talking pork roll…

She thought we should follow the truck and give the people at the other end a piece of our minds.  I suggested this might be a really bad idea since being arrested for trespassing at the company for which her father works might reflect poorly.

Have I mentioned I adore my daughter?  I’d choose her any morning before a slice of crispy bacon, and that’s saying something.