The Great Spinach Rebellion

When I was twelve years old, I dared to launch what I like to call The Great Spinach Rebellion, one of the few times I truly confronted my parents.

My mother had a habit of serving boiled spinach. No butter, salt or seasonings, just a great lump of shriveled greens sitting in a bowl bathed in green liquid. She was a great believer in greens, my mom: spinach, beet greens (equally loathed) or dandelion greens picked from the lawn (I won’t even go there and you’re welcome).

Usually I just choked the spinach down, because my father was a chair, CEO, and director of the Clean Plate Club. We were all members, required to eat all the food on our plates at every meal. It took years to undo the effect of that rule!

One Friday night, Mom served us our usual fish, dictated by the Catholic Church, along with a bowl of spinach. I wasn’t happy with the fish, but ate it out of Catholic guilt.

I didn’t eat my spinach, which teamed with the fish, made the meal totally unappetizing. Dad insisted. I demurred. Dad insisted again, louder. I said no. My brother smirked.

“If you don’t eat that spinach now, you will have it for breakfast, cold. And NO dessert,” he bellowed.

So be it. I could be stubborn, too. “May I be excused, please?”

“You may go to your room.”

 I got up from the table without waiting for another comment, and I could hear him making ‘wasting perfectly good food comments’ all the way up to my room. At least he didn’t bring up the starving children in Africa.

There on the table for breakfast the next morning sat the bowl, now containing ice cold spinach, sitting like a lump of accusation.  I regarded it with loathing while everyone else ate pancakes my father had made. Deliberately. I stayed resolved and the spinach remained untouched. After breakfast, Dad told me, “You will have it for lunch. Go to your room.”

Fortunately, I didn’t feel particularly hungry at that point but I did overheard my mother pleading with my father to forget the spinach. Something about my being a growing girl and needing food. My father was intransigent.

Cold spinach for lunch. Same reaction. Only this time I smiled, because it occurred to me that I could be as stubborn as my dad. When he asked why I was smiling, which ticked his temper up another notch, I just asked to be excused.

By midafternoon, my stomach had started to rumble and Mom was getting frantic. I could hear her begging my Dad to let her give me something to eat. When I came into the kitchen sometime later, Mom said, “I left the spinach out, so it’s not cold. If you only eat one bite, I’ll tell him you ate it … please?”

She looked so distressed, I decided I could manage one bite, just for her. I sat down, picked up the smallest amount I could and still have it qualify as a bite, and popped it in my mouth.

Mom smiled and took the bowl away. “Would you like a cheese dream?” she asked. That’s a toasted cheese sandwich in our family, in case you’re wondering.

I nodded, got up from the table and casually walked to the downstairs bathroom. Where I closed the door, spit the spinach into the toilet, and flushed.

I think we’d managed a compromise, but Mom hardly ever served spinach after that, and never on a Friday.