Artichokes

My son eats the whole leaf of the artichoke. He sucks the soft flesh from the tender bottom, then scrapes his teeth along the sinuous upper edge, where I’ve snipped the spiky point. He grins and puts the leaves on his napkin rather than in the discard bowl—so he can go back and make sure he hasn’t missed anything. We go through a quarter stick of melted butter, salty, creamy, golden, swimming with lightly browned garlic and a squeeze of lemon.

We’ve both worked our way through the outer leaves when he states emphatically: “we need more butter Mom.” I smile while I reach for the garlic, melt another quarter stick, squeeze in the lemon, add a pinch of salt. When we dive back in, he tastes it and says “not quite— it’s missing something. I’ll take care of it”. He hops off his stool and squeezes more lemon into the bowl, mixes, tastes... “Not yet”. I suggest maybe the garlic needs to brown more. So he gets up, dumps the butter back into the cast iron, stirs, waits and watches. I resist the urge to tell him “be careful” as he begins to pour the hot, golden liquid back into the bowl. I murmur appreciation when he realizes the heavy cast iron pan is hot, sets it down carefully, grabs a pot holder, and then begins pouring the hot butter again. He brings the blue constellation bowl back to the table and hesitates a second before dipping another leaf. “Mmmmmm… it's not the same as the first, but it’s so good!”

Together, we marvel over the way the inner leaves become luminescent, white and pearly like an exotic flower, joke over who gets to the heart first and smile when we realize how much we both love to get to the heart— both of the artichoke and of life. The second bowl of butter is empty and almost clean by the time we’re done.