I Just Can’t Stomach It
Are you, or your child, a natural vegetarian? I was born a vegetarian, and it is thanks to Bert Hughes (RIP), and Anita Desai, author of the novel Fasting, Feasting that I can say this with confidence.
The motivation for writing the following story is due to an anonymous young local girl who came up to me one day to thank me, for having proclaimed once in her earshot that there are natural-born vegetarians, and I am one of them.
In just fifty years, how the fortunes of my family had risen! My mother put eggs in front of us every single morning, and meat every single evening. She is a great cook, and like many a mother before her, she expressed her nurturing first and foremost through feeding her family. Neither of my parents would tolerate wasted food, so in our house, you ate what was put on your plate before you were allowed to leave the table.
I was an obedient child, but I just could not swallow meat. I chewed and chewed and chewed. There was no enjoyment, just increasing misery. The wad of meat in my cheek grew ever larger, tougher and dryer, and swallowing did not arrive. It took me hours to clear my dinner plate. Frequently I was left alone in the kitchen while everyone else carried on with their evening. My older sister was bathed by the au pair and made ready for bed, while my diplomat parents got ready to go out. One time my parents came home at midnight, and eventually found me weary-eyed but still sitting at the table, bleakly chewing.
Oh, how I longed for a dog!
When I was four, I invented a great trick. It saved me for quite some months, until, that is, my mother did a thorough clean of the kitchen which included wiping under the chair cushions. She screamed. She thought she was looking at a squashed and festering rodent. It was my father who did the forensics, and enlightened her.
The kitchen chair cushions were permanently removed.
Don’t get me wrong. I liked other food. I didn’t have a death wish, and I wasn’t looking for attention. I would have happily existed eating rice and peas with tomato ketchup, and loads of salad with vinaigrette dressing. Yum! Add a cheese and vegemite sandwich for lunch and Lucinda is a happy bunny. At one grandmother’s house, (where, ironically, they had a dog attending table for scraps) we ate porridge (with salt and milk) for breakfast and I loved it. Nutrition wise, that is actually an excellent diet right there.
I was rarely sick as a child, and even as a baby, I never vomited. I tell you about my strong stomach as a prelude to my reaction to eggs. Pity me! For though I had, over all, a happy enough and fortunate childhood, each and every one of my childhood days was book-ended by trauma. At breakfast it was eggs.
Now, I did not have trouble swallowing eggs and I quite liked the taste, but after I ate them I was the unwilling author of large, loud, long and frequent ‘sick burps’. Sorry now, I know that is not pleasant to read. It is even less pleasant to do. Your throat erupts and fills with hot stinking acid. Then there is nothing for it but to swallow it back down again. You sound revolting, and the startled children around you keep as wide a berth from you as they would if you had vomited all over yourself.
I favoured clothes with pockets. The wider and deeper, the better. By the time I was nine, I learned to pop into the loo before breakfast and secure a stash of toilet paper to furtively wrap my egg up in. I recommend a well-done poached egg for an all-in-one sleight of hand from plate to wrap to pocket. At school I would find an opportunity to decant the pocket into a bin. It took me too long, but eventually I copped on that I could just flush the whole kit and caboodle down the toilet at home. Please believe me when I tell you that I am not sly by nature. My skills at deception were born from desperation.
Fast forward three decades. I make the acquaintance of Bert Hughes, and we get chatting. Bert was a Welsh-born Romany Gypsy, an extremely kind and perceptive man, and erudite, as he was a fountain of facts esoteric and general. I told him that I am a vegetarian, but that it is out of preference, and that I admire people who like meat but have given it up for ecological or humanitarian reasons. To which he responded: “ I am the same. Are you type A blood?”
“I am,” I confirmed, wonderingly.
“We were all taught that early humans were hunters and gatherers”, says Bert, “but some peoples were mostly gatherers, and only rarely hunted or ate meat. They were type A blood. Then you had the peoples who rarely came across vegetation, and the only food they could get was meat and fish. They were type O blood.”
“Oh my god!” I replied.
“You, my dear, are a natural vegetarian. As am I.”
It was not long after this conversation that I came across and devoured Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai. This novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. The main character of the book is, wonder of wonders, a natural born vegetarian, and the story is about his and his sister’s lives, viewed through that central fact. They are Indian, with parents who have lapsed from their vegetarian tradition. He then goes on to a university scholarship in the USA. Oh my. I cried for him, but Desai also makes you laugh uproariously at American attitudes and male incomprehension. It is without a doubt my favourite book, for it mirrored my life on many unexamined levels and gave me the encouragement and perspective to forgive my mother and heal from that childhood trauma.
Thank you Anita.
