17 SECRET AGENT: Are You Hooked?

TITLE: SOME KIND OF NORMAL
GENRE: Commercial Fiction


I ain’t one to bash being healthy, but it sure takes the fun out of living. My motivation to be the perfect mom starts about six a.m. when I swing my legs over the bed and ends fifteen minutes later when I stumble into the kitchen to make coffee and figure out what I can cook for breakfast that won’t kill no one.

It wasn’t always like this. I followed my own mama’s footsteps for years, laying out a spread that included all four types of meat, and grits with cream and brown sugar if Travis was lucky. But during Travis’s mid-life physical, his doctor told him my daily ham with sausage gravy on biscuits was driving him to an early grave. He slid the lab results across his desk at me, claiming Travis’s LDL numbers were higher than a crackhead’s. I said if a crackhead had my sausage gravy he’d give up the crack and rather die of plugged arteries. He didn’t laugh. We switched to eggs and toast.

Then when Logan was young enough to run around bare-tushed, he developed hives and a propensity for up chucking. His pediatrician pointed to the milk we poured on his Cocoa Crispies each morning. Who the Sam Hill is allergic to milk, I asked. We switched to Pop Tarts and apple juice anyway.