My son and I are night owls. And with covid-related school closures (for 13 months running) nothing has sidetracked our stay-up-late tendencies. We were up past 12:30 A.M. last night. The pork tenderloin and sweet potatoes had long since been digested. We needed a snack.
As I hunted around the pantry, I chuckled to myself about his back-seat snacking habits. Something about the car makes him hungry, so he's eaten many a snack in that back seat. (You can't imagine what I've vacuumed up from under the floor mats).
On road trips, we supply several snacks and allow him to pick and choose what he likes. When the sound of a crunch makes my stomach growl, I've reached toward the back seat hoping for a morsel. What gets placed in my beckoning hand? A potato chip the size of a fingernail. A tiny, tiny raisin. A quarter-inch long (and semi-burned) French fry. Once I received a sucked-on fruit jelly.
So after selecting a box of gluten-free matzo crackers for our late-night snack, I returned to the couch. Someone was definitely interested. Before I could open the box, he was leaning over, nose ready (food must pass the smell test). The first cracker out of the box was snatched and devoured (think Croc Hunter feeding his crocodiles). Crumbs splattered our fleece blanket in a matzo frenzy.
As I munched, I kept my little crocodile happy by having his next cracker poised in my hand. I was like his personal PEZ dispenser.
We reached the bottom of the box before I expected to - "Here's the last one, Bud, all yours." He snatched it while chewing the previous cracker.
As I placed the box on the floor beside me, I felt an arm on my side. I looked over, and there was Zach's hand, extending that last sheet of matzo cracker. He looked me in the eyes as if to say, "You have it, Mom." He waited.
I melted. Such a small gesture, but with enormous meaning. "It's okay, Zach, it's for you." He retracted his arm. I adjusted the "crumby" blanket.
What happened next melted me even more. He looked at the matzo square, carefully broke it in half, and offered it to me. Not a corner, not a nibble. An equal half of the matzo. I accepted graciously.
That's the first time a cracker made me cry.
