My Sweet Potato

"Hannah. There's sweet potato in the fridge if you want it."

She watched me take a bite earlier, with the pleasure of someone who has just saved a life; a common reaction when she sees me eat her cooking.

It's very important to her.

Again, as she peers into my bowl of rice.

"Hannah, don't you want sweet potato?"

Cloying, her self worth hangs on this moment.

She absolutely needs to feed me. She needs to know I love her and she can only know it if I eat a sweet potato RIGHT NOW.

How fun.

I buck up as if to deliver some uncomfortable honesty. "Well, actually. I really do want sweet potatoes. It's just that... YOU made them, and I hate you."

We dissolve into laughter, hers of an agonized variety I treasure.

Laughing to tears is all the emotional processing any relationship needs. We are willing to see it all. We are willing to play with anything.

The hardest part is letting it be that easy.