sweet corn

Going swimming, eating sweet corn (for the first time on the cob)... what a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon with family.

I had bought chicken brats and white corn on the cob the day before at the market. The brats had been boiled in beer and lots of garlic and then the brats and corn were both grilled until they were a bit charred.

We had been to the pool and had played really hard in the water. Pete learning to kick and blow bubbles and William learning to become braver and braver about putting his head under and swimming on his own. When we got back to my place everybody was hungry. The boys milled around the kitchen looking for any handouts as they waited impatiently for dinner to be ready.

Finally all was ready, dinner was served and we had moved to the table. For a few minutes it was silent as we all started to eat... gosh, we really were hungry! Then I took my first bite of sweet corn...

Now, I have never been a big fan of sweet corn, or at least the golden kind I ate as a kid. It is messy, it gets in your teeth, and frankly the taste seldom made the work of eating it worth it. I remember Mr. Reeser bringing my mom grocery bags full of the stuff and knowing I would have to eat it for days until it was gone. But in the last five-ten years I have discovered white sweet corn. Where was it all those years I was growing up? Is this one of those new sweeter varieties developed by the corn industry to keep us hooked - and fattened - on corn? And I have learned how to prepare it. On the grill, shucks still on.

So as I took my first bite of corn, I sighed, "mmmmm" and took another bite. Then I looked up. Peter was watching me from across the table. I said "mmmm" again and then he reached for his corn, which had been cut off the cob, and popped a kernel into his mouth and said. "mmm". Conversation began to pop up around the table, but Pete and I kept "mmming" and eating. But he wanted a cob. Finally I told my daughter, his mom, to give him a half cob to try (she had told me he did not get corn-on-the-cob yet). After some coaching... "hold it in two hands"... he got the idea.

Needless to say, when dinner was over, Pete needed a bath and my table cloth needed to be washed.

It is in these small, but precious moments, that the joy of God and life overtake me. Sweet corn. Sweet Pete.

As Anne Lamott has taught me, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."