Honey-dew what?

Being out in this big world on my own gives me the privilege of having these moments where I realize I'm turning in to my mother. Don't take that wrong. My mom is a great woman-- in fact, maybe even super woman. But I remember as a child in her home she sometimes came up with, what I thought to be very lame Family Home Evening treats. The worst was when we had melons. I'm a big girl. I can admit that I'm not a melon lover. Melons are watery, hard to cut up and often flavorless. When Monday night rolled around I always looked forward to some sweet treat that was chocolaty or carmely or sugary enough to give me a buzz. However, there were those times when my little mouth, anticipating sticky, gooey wonderfulness, would ask, "What are we having for the treat, Mother-dearest?" And I'd get shot down with, "Watermelon." REALLY?

Yesterday afternoon I was doing the grocery shopping. I had gathered most of my nonperishable items when I remembered that we needed a treat for FHE. I walked over to the dessert aisle in Macey's to see if anything caught my fancy. Pudding, cakes, brownies, frostings, strudels, cinnamon buns! So many tasty things, so little time. I began to pick up box after box to read the ingredients. Enriched bleached no-nutrition-left-in-it flour, high fructose corn syrup, regular corn syrup, sugar, fully hydrogenated vegetable oil, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, maltidextrihydrophoripleixic-what? A knot started to form in my stomach. I couldn’t feed that man I love this garbage after forcing him to eat a cake for a week. I decided to look in produce for something more nutritional.

Macey's had strawberries on sale for a good price. This was perfect. I could get strawberries and mix them with some mandarin oranges I had at home and make a little fruit salad. However, upon further examination of the strawberries, I found most of them to be rather moldy. Maybe we didn't need a treat every Monday. Maybe we could split a piece of toast with jam on it and call it good. I retreated to the check out. What display of really cheap and perfectly ripe fruit was destined to be right in front of my register? Melons. I sighed. They looked good. I sighed again. Paul likes them. I sighed once more. It would make a good treat. . . I added a small cantaloupe to the belt.

All these years of complaining when melons were served for Family Night and there I was, buying a cantaloupe on a Monday. I bet my mom has felt this same way-- buying something seemingly lame but healthy because you love your family and know, despite what they think they want, all that junk won't do them any good. Buying something grown straight from the dirt so your family could taste the subtle flavor and gently sweetness of nature. Thanks, Mom, for making me eat watermelons, and cantaloupes, and honeydews so I could appreciate a treat cut up lovingly by your hands and made the way God intended.