Family and Unity.

I decided that I would go home this weekend.  For someone who lives only thirty five minutes away, I rarely go home.  In fact, this is my second time home since I started college.  Coming home has reminded me of how my diet constantly revolves around what my family desires.  Not that my input does not matter, it is just the fact that everyone in my family loves meat.  Growing up in a conservative, southern baptist, and bourgeois household, I was constantly taught that eating meat was a gift from God and being a vegetarian was a satanic tool used by Jillian Michaels.  Why would you want to be a vegetarian in the south?  We are the staple of barbecue sandwiches and fried chicken livers.  Telling my parents that I was a vegetarian was difficult.  At first, their responses were not positive.  However, after a couple of minutes of thought, they were accepting of it.  I even believe that my mother is proud of me for doing this.

Today, I ate all of my meals with my parents.  For lunch, my mother, father, and I ate at Fazoli's.  I consumed a plate of fettuccine Alfredo, a salad drenched in balsamic vinaigrette dressing, two bread sticks, and two glasses of lemonade.  At lunch, I had the opportunity to tell my parents of some of the amazing experiences I had been having at college.  These experiences were intermingled with laughter, warm smiles, and love.  I think that food is an excellent social connector; it is a universal medium that develops relationships and social constructs.  Friends, families, and hopeless romantics can share their lives over helpings of food.

For dinner, I ate a grilled cheese and a bowl of spaghettiO's.  This meal brought back nostalgic memories of the simple times in my life.  The moments where my greatest concerns were what cartoons I was going to watch or what hobbies I would partake in.  I think that my vegetarianism sailed me upstream; it brought me back to my familial roots.

Vegetarianism taught me an invaluable lesson.  It exemplified that despite all of the diverse diets and social constructs, we are still a globally, interconnected species.