There’s a lot less honesty going around than people are willing to admit to. — Kelley McCabe

I’ll start with myself. I’d like to believe I’ve ended up being a pretty good mom. Of course, everything’s relative, so compared to somebody that is undoubtedly true. It reminds me of my aunt who, upon pouring herself a scotch at 11:00 in the morning would say, “It’s noon somewhere in the world…”

Whether or not I am a good mom depends upon your perspective and the measure you are using for comparison. But here is something that is absolutely true: in any given moment I can choose to react to my children in my age-old ways – which are often the same age-old ways my mother reacted to me, and her mother reacted to her, and so on. Or I can choose something different.

This morning didn’t start off well. I woke up with a sore throat, headache and a feeling of achy-ness and pain in my back. Since it was communion Sunday, I needed to go to two services, not one. I also needed to pick up my daughter from a sleepover before I went to church. I was on schedule for all of this until I couldn’t find my under-eye cover-up makeup (which I sorely needed) – coincidentally, it’s the very same kind of cover-up makeup my daughter uses for her acne. I concocted some other combination of cosmetics, which mostly did the trick, but took a few additional minutes. Then I went to pick up my daughter. I quickly realized that when I had “cleaned up the car” I had accidentally thrown away the paper on which I had written the pick-up address the previous day. I stomped back into the house and tore into the trash. No paper. It had apparently made its way to the outside trash barrel and there was no way I was rooting through that. The phone number I needed was on the same paper, so calling was out of the question. I could have looked up the number in the phone book IF I could have remembered the last name of the child with whom my daughter was enjoying a sleepover. But who needs to know last names when you have the phone number and address?

Not feeling well, I wasn’t exactly operating on all cylinders. Finally I decided to look at the school phone directory which lists students by grade. I found the girl’s first name (fortunately, she was the only girl with that name in my daughter’s grade) and thus her last name and, at last, her address. I drove to the neighborhood in which my daughter had said her friend lived – but there was no street by that name. I stopped to ask a woman walking her dogs if she knew where I might find this street and she looked confused. I mentioned the last name of the people I was looking for and she brightened considerably. She apparently was a friend of the family and remarked, “Oh, I’m playing golf with Kara (the mother) this afternoon!” We live in a small town…

With my new directions I proceeded several miles back in the direction I had come. I arrived at the gated community in which my daughter’s friend lived… and realized the code necessary to enter the community was on the same lost paper! I began to despair of ever getting to church on time. With a little more analysis, I solved the gate code problem and finally arrived at the friends’ home… only to find my daughter was still sleeping and needed time to gather her things before we could leave.

Most of these problems were of my own making, but that did not stop me from being annoyed.

After collecting her things, I dropped my daughter off at home and picked up my son. As we headed to church, he thanked me for taking him to the movies the previous night with his friends. I reached out and patted his shoulder. “Thank you for expressing appreciation,” I said.

That one moment transformed the morning. I realized, if I pay attention, I can make any moment exactly as I would choose it to be. Although everything leading up to that moment had been frustrating, I chose to let all of that be a part of the past and simply participate authentically in the exchange of appreciation with my son. I was surprised by how different, and unaffected, that moment was from all the frustrating moments of the previous hour.

And, in that one moment, I thought I understood the meaning of the word “freedom”. I didn’t have to let my previous upset impact my interaction with my son. It was a new moment, all its own, and I was completely free to experience it independently of any other moment (or set of moments).

I also immediately realized the applicability of this freedom with respect to mindful eating. In each new moment I am completely free to choose what I do or do not eat. It doesn’t matter what I ate the previous hour, the previous day, or the previous month. This moment is, in fact, its own. It is only how I think about it that links it to previous moments. But I also have within my power to see this moment as it really is: one moment in time that has a relationship to previous moments but whose outcome is not necessarily determined by those moments.

Last night I had a celebration dinner (prior to the movies) with my son, his friends, and my parents. After our meal my mother, who is dieting, decided she wished to share a dessert with my step-father. They decided on apple pie and my step-father went to purchase the item, but returned empty-handed several minutes later.

“Where’s the apple pie?” my mother inquired.

“They’re out of apple pie,” he answered.

My mother and I had been deep into a discussion of Dr. Wansink’s research on mindless eating when my step-father returned. We brought him up to date. The conversation then turned to a management training experience my mother had had once had where she was blindfolded and, with the aid of a “manager”, attended a 3 hour cocktail party and formal dinner. My mother said that without being able to see how much food she had on her plate she had actually eaten less for several reasons: 1) it was hard work to eat when she couldn’t see what she was doing, 2) eating took longer and she felt full after having eaten less and, 3) she determined it was time to stop eating when she was no longer hungry – not when she had eaten everything on her plate – because she didn’t know what was on her plate!

Our conversation ended and it was time for us to go our respective ways. I thanked my mother for her gifts (the dinner was a celebration of some of my son’s academic achievements) and said good-bye. All of a sudden she remarked, “You know, I’m not even hungry for that apple pie anymore. All I needed was a little time to go by and I forgot all about wanting it… Another example of how our thinking dictates what we eat!”

It’s amazing to me what we can learn when we are paying attention. I hope what my mother and I learned is of benefit to you!