On growing up "weird" and relieving the pressure of parenthood.

Why did the hipster burn his tongue on the pizza?

Because he ate it before it was cool.

Back when I was in elementary and middle school I distinctly remember being embarassed by a lot of the things that my family did. I mean at first I thought it was cool that we did so many things that the other kids had never heard of before. Full disclosure: I was a bit of a know-it-all, so I took great joy in telling my classmates about the neat stuff we did on the weekends that they didn't have a clue about. But around age 10 the tween years started to kick in, being "cool" started to be important, and suddenly I realized WE were the weirdos.

So what exactly was it about my family growing up that didn't exactly put me at the top of the pecking order when it came time to form those nasty little cliques that pre-teen girls seperate themselves into?

• We belonged to a food co-op.

• We baked all of our own bread (specifically my dad, also not normal it turns out), cookies, pasteries, etc.

• We canned things. Lots of things.

• We went apple, tomato, blueberry, you-name-it picking (see: "canning" above).

• We ate a lot of ethnic foods (which often ended up in my brown bag lunches - hot lunch was off limits)

• We didn't have cable (*gasp*) or video games (**double gasp**).

• We went on "educational" vacations, mostly involving camping and museums (read: NOT Disney).

• We tapped our own trees to make maple syrup

• We wore a lot of clothes that my mom or various relatives had made for us.

• We ate dinner together every night, no excuses.

• We saw a lot of live performance art (e.g. ballet, orchestra, theater) and equally few movies.

• We didn't go to the mall very much, in fact we didn't shop a whole lot at all, but when we did it was local.

Get the picture?

No, literally, see the picture below? That's my dad and little sister "tapping" our maple trees in the front yard to collect the sap and boil it down to make maple syrup. Doesn't everyone have a picture of their family out in the freezing cold drilling holes into the side of a tree in their front yard?

My sister and dad "tapping" the trees, circa 1997'ish.

Basically, as the list above demonstrates, we were the original hipsters, but way less annoying and pretentious. What could be better than that? If only 10 year-old me had known that in 2016, "everyone would be doing it."

"With great power comes great responsibility."

- Uncle Ben, Spiderman

Now that is not to say that we didn't have other friends whose parents made them do strange "hippie" things too. We certainly did. And, similar to my own individual experience, everything was hunky-dory until our little group hit puberty and started pushing back as adolecents do. Entire camping trips plugged into our headphones on our Walkmans, or sitting in the car sulking while the parents and younger kids picked bushels of apples, you know, nice pleasant scenarios like that.

In short, we were dead set against all the tree-hugging, granola eating, PBS watching torture that our parents were putting us through day-in and day-out.

Over the years this group of friends and I all went our seperate ways and we haven't really stayed in touch. But I do know generally what they are all doing with their lives...and as a new parent this is simultaneously both fascinating and terrifying to me. We all, every one of us, is involved in farming & gardening, music & the arts, and perhaps most importantly, we all volunteer & give of our time to build up the various communities in which we now live.

I know, I know it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why when we all became adults, it turned out this way - "nature vs. nurture" blah, blah, blah. But really, think about it. While there are certianly aspects of my upbringing that I've rebeled against (my sister and I are boderline shop-a-holics - but we really do try to keep a lot of it local!), the truth of the matter is that being a parent is powerful position in which to find oneself.

CG learning her letters the "superhero" way.

From the very start, what we choose to expose our daughter to is slowly shaping who she will become. As parents we will always worry if we have done our best by our children. Maybe she'll think we're odd for growing our own vegetables, maybe she'll end up hating CrossFit, maybe she'll only want to eat big bloody steaks while prancing around the house in tutus. These are the sorts of things that you wonder about as a new parent as you lay awake in bed trying to listen for their breathing, bracing yourself for the 6 a.m. wake-up call from the other room.

I should also add here that I feel an extra special kind of parental anxiety over trying to raise a strong, confident daughter (thus the night terrors about tutus and the superhero alphabet board book in the picture). Call it a double standard if you want, but that will be a whole other conversation to have in another blog post(s) down the line.

But instead of dwelling too long on how badly we might screw things up as parents, the husband and I are taking a slightly different approach to these early months of CG's development. She can't talk back yet and unless we are trying to get her dressed for bed or put her into her car seat (she hates long sleeves and when "The Man" is holding her down, but don't we all) "Mama" and "Dada" can really do no wrong. So why not fully embrace our "weirdness" and instead of changing who we already are, bring her along for the ride and see how our identity as a family unit evolves more organically? I do not doubt that as she gets older we will cross all of those worrisome bridges when we come to them (although I don't know what her dad will do if she rejects CrossFit). But in the meantime we intend to have as much fun as we can checking off things on each of our lists from our childhood days and perhaps more importantly, creating a new list of what we want for our daughter, for our family.

CG helping us pick blueberries during my maternity leave this past summer.

For only eight months into this whole "parent" thing, I actually feel like this philosophy has served us pretty well so far. When we are out and about (which is a lot - that's kind of who we are) people often ask us if CG is our first and they are typically surprised by the answer.

"Really? But you both seem so relaxed, so at ease."

As if being a first-time parent makes you into some sort of uptight germaphobic hermit. Well as it turns out, it doesn't have to. No, life won't be exactly the same as it used to be, and we wouldn't want it to be. But instead of losing our identities, we are embracing the challenge of adding "parent" to the bullet points under the "About Me" section of our lives.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I've been lucky enough to find a partner in crime to help instill these values in CG as we raise her together. None of this would be possible without him (literally and figuratively). As is demonstrated by the adorableness that is the baby-wearing, blueberry picking moment above, his is also an excellent sport when it comes to my more recently aquired obsession with Instagram.

He also gets an extra special shout-out for keeping the baby busy while I spent days agonizing over what this first post would say and look like!

#food #growingup #parenthood