The Freedom To Change

posted 6th July 2010    Written by: Nicole Antoinette    CATEGORY: All Posts, Nicole Antoinette, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, What I've Learned

For the 18 years before I was born, my mother was a flight attendant. Shortly after giving birth, she again took to the skies, and then promptly quit after realizing that sitting on the jump seat, starring at a picture of your baby and sobbing hysterically don’t make for a fun high-altitude hostess.

So she stayed home with me, which I loved, because she was my eternal playmate.

It was different with my dad though. He worked long hours, took frequent overseas business trips, and wasn’t involved in the every-second-of-the-day-ness of my life like my mother was. But when he was home, he’d always take me on adventures around the city.

New York City was our playground, something I didn’t fully appreciate with my five tender years of life experience, and the fun was everywhere. It was always this museum and that street fair and this park and that exhibit and everything else the city had to show us during our Saturdays on the town.

Most often, if the weather allowed, we’d wind up in Central Park. The rocks around the park were mountainous in my eyes, and climbing to the top of them was a sought after feat. We’d routinely walk from one end of the park to the other, stopping uptown at Citarella so my dad could buy fresh fish for dinner.

Which is where the wheels usually flew off the wagon of our picturesque adventure day.

The Enormous Father Daughter Fish Debate would start as soon as he began steering us toward the park’s exit. I might have only been five, but I knew when it was fish time.

“No thank you,” I’d say.

He would look down at me calmly, “I didn’t offer you anything.”

“No thank you for fish,” I’d reply.

“The fish isn’t for you,” he’d say. “Although it wouldn’t kill you to taste some.”

My eyes would go wide. Was he serious? He couldn’t be serious. Definitely not. But maybe? No. Fish? Would I have to? No. But maybe? Ah! Disaster!

“It maybe would kill me,” I’d answer thoughtfully, at which point he’d take my hand and we’d cross the street toward the store.

“I said no thank you!” I pleaded, trying to pull him back toward the park.

“We’re going inside,” he’d try to say, interrupted immediately by my desperate argument that it smelled too much like fish and so we’d have to stay outside. To which my father would reply that well, it is fish, and what did I expect?

Exasperated, my next attempt was to shout about how I DON’T EAT THINGS WITH WEIRD GOOGLY EYES BECAUSE OH THE DISGUSTING HORROR. I then made fish faces and pretended to die a disease filled, ‘why would you ever even think to eat me’ type of death, which is more or less when I was given The Look.  Meaning that I got my ass inside and did my best to stare at the floor and breathe through my mouth.

After we’d been going on these outings for about a year, my father thought (for some insane reason) that it was time I learned about sushi, and he told me all about it. I was disgusted. I just, I couldn’t for the six-year-old life of me imagine how anyone ate raw fish. My father assured me, year after year, that I would grow to like it. I told him, year after year, that it was more likely that I’d grow twelve more legs than a taste for raw fish.

And yet here I am, twenty years later, loving sushi. Loving sushi! Me! When I first called my dad to tell him that I was on my way home from a sushi dinner, I thought he was going to have a stroke. The truth though, is that for me, the hardest part about loving sushi didn’t have anything to do with the way it tastes.

The hardest part about loving sushi was allowing myself the freedom to change.

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Comments (5)

5 Responses to “The Freedom To Change”

  • Lindsay Says:
    July 6th, 2010 at 10:30 am

    Hah! I also hated the fish store when I was little. It was a painful experience, to be dragged in there with those tanks full of sea creatures and the fishy smell. But now, I could gobble up pretty much any sea creature you put on my plate.

  • Sally JPA Says:
    July 6th, 2010 at 10:44 am

    Great post, Nicole. I love it.

  • Caz Says:
    July 6th, 2010 at 9:15 pm

    love it!

    haha I too was scared of sushi until forced to try it in first year university by some new dorm-mates. These city-fied kids invited small-town me to Japanese and then refused to eat with me unless I ordered some sort of raw fish. What started as tuna and salmon maki has now developed into a lifelong obsession with all things raw-fish.

    xoxo

  • Romantic Comedee Says:
    July 7th, 2010 at 3:50 am

    Aww Nicole, I think had we met at five years old we would have been fast friends. Your five year old speak reminds me of me. For example, my mom read me a story about Stellaluna (a mama bat) at which point I promptly informed I was now nocturnal and would now be attending night school.

  • suki Says:
    July 7th, 2010 at 8:08 am

    Raw fish now might be my favorite thing to eat… ;) Luckily we live in a place where fresh fish is not so hard to find.

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