All Grown Up

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." Mark Twain

And a less benevolent, albeit true-at-times one,

"Mothers of teenagers know why animals eat their young." Unknown author

But I digress.

Let's stick with the Twain quote. It's much more appropriate.

My eldest daughter called me today with a question I have been waiting 20 years to field: "Tell me about my heritage." My first reaction was to laugh with recognition that yours truly was about the same age when she had the wonderful opportunity to spend some months with her own grandparents, basking in their love and picking their brains for that all-too-dwindling oral history of our family.

My response was to refer her to my initial entries about our ancestry: I Finally Got One and Coming Full Circle Times Two. Not to brag, but these do seem well-written and succinct, two qualities appreciated by the young.

Her next question was just as much fun.

"What, exactly, is meant by 'organic'?" (See recent entry about said daughter's new job.)

I love it!

So, I proceeded to give her about an hour's worth of organic farming, from the global issues of sustainability and feeding the world's population to the big, bad evil Monsanto, Syngenta and Bill Gates and their monopoly on conventional farming and their interest in the Svalbard Seed Vault to the history of farming itself to the reason organic food is here to stay to the politics of it all and everything in between.

I could feel her almost taking notes over the phone.

"Wow, Mom, you know so much! Can you jot the main points down and send them to me in an email?" So, I guess I get to take the notes. Oh, well. That's OK.

I'm just glad I was ready and had learned so much in the past seven years.