Tonight I attended a Mom's Night Out special cooking class at Whole Foods, my very first cooking class! But it was also a Mom's Night Out, so it was casual and informal and we didn't have to work very hard at all. Maybe I've been watching too much Food Network (and I haven't watched much at all lately), because for some reason I was expecting we'd be under the gun and working hard the whole time. Not at all, and that's exactly what we needed for a night out. We made an appetizer, salad, main course, and a dessert, and I definitely picked up a few tips and a few good recipes.
Ordinarily, a cooking class would have been the highlight of my month, but I can't get my mind off the air-bombing campaigns in the mid-1940s, what these very young men had to do and how they survived it. And now I have yet another perspective from which to imagine it: that of the mothers. When I see a crew list on a 10-man bomber that included a pair of brothers, chills go down my spine.
I've been talking to the boys about bomber planes and why they existed, and am finding it's no easy feat to explain WWII, even in the simplest terms. "Why did the bad man Hitler want to take over the world?" Julian asked, riveted. Gabriel being about numbers had to ask right away when there was a World War I, and then added, "I sure hope there isn't ever a World War Three!" Yup, you and most others, kid. But there are some who are attempting to wage it now anyway.
It's a shame that history was consistently my worst subject in school, because I'm starting to feel like it's the most important subject for me to teach them.
5/21/09
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