Sam I Am would never have sold me on those green eggs and ham. I don’t hate eggs. I just don’t seek them out.
My sons, on the other hand, love eggs. Scramble them, fry them, add cheese or nothing, and our boys will gobble them down.
So most mornings you’ll find me standing over a frying pan, cooking eggs.
Before we met Leo, I had scrambled about a dozen eggs—all for my husband. I had never fried one. Then we got to China, and I watched our then-2-year-old inhale eggs off the hotel breakfast buffets. One of the dishes he loved there was steamed egg, which came with diced scallions and soy sauce sprinkled on top.
When we brought Leo home, he had to make thousands of adjustments. He adapted to new people, new sleeping arrangements, a new language, new foods, new everything—seemingly taking everything in his stride. I took him to an Asian market to stock up on noodles and other familiar foods. We found a fantastic Chinese carry-out and he guzzled their won ton soup. But I figured I could at least cook eggs for him myself. The house smells like eggs for hours afterward and the frying pan takes longer to clean than the eggs do to eat. Still, it’s such a small task.
No one will ever put me to work on a breakfast buffet in China, folding fluffy mushroom omelets and frying eggs, made to order, sizzling hot as they slide onto plates.
But when I deliver eggs to the breakfast table, our boys’ faces light up. They would eat them on a train or in the rain. And these days, they’re sprinkling them not with soy sauce, but with Old Bay.