Dead Fish Tacos

It’s Ann here today. Andy is hiding in OurLittleCorner hoping you will seek him out without being too traumatized.

I’m admittedly jealous of all of my friends who have grandchildren who are still babies—or who are just 2 years old or maybe 8 or even 13 (here’s lookin’ at you, Besties!). Sure there are ups and downs when you’re with kids, but they still exude something lively—and often funny—that we elders can’t match. For example, there was our friends’ son, Hugo, an 8-year-old, who got up Thanksgiving morning—before his parents—and sleepily walked past Andy and me as we sipped our coffee/tea, greeting us not with a “Good Morning” nor a “Hi” or even a dismissive grunt, but with “And how is your day going so far?” You learn to expect the unexpected.

I probably should have entitled this blog “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” but you’ll soon see why “Dead Fish Tacos” is better. Back when we still had young grandchildren—2009, to be exact—our daughter, Sara, was doing social media for Tacolicious, the restaurant she worked at in San Francisco. After visiting us with the boys on a lovely summer day, she followed up their visit with a little essay for the Tacolicious web page.

Here’s what Sara wrote: Sometimes I wish that there were a Let’s Go! parenthood guidebook out there, aimed at the big questions kids ask that you’re just never prepared for. Actually, it would make a great iPhone app.

It would have been handy one day, when, at age fourish, my son Silas looked out at the church steeple that we can see from our window and asked me why there are “T”s on a lot of churches. 

I told him the T is called a cross, which is a sign for Christianity. 

That, of course, was not sufficient enough—it rarely is. Kids excel in the follow-up. The next question was, “Mama, why is it a cross?” And, caught in a moment of wanting to be a modern parent who is honest with their children, a parent who tells it how it is, I said:

“Well, Silas, the cross is a symbol for Jesus Christ.”

“Who’s Jesus Christ?”

“Yes, right. Jesus Christ. We haven’t covered that?” How was I going to put this.

“Well, he was a very nice man that people really loved and believed in.” But, for some reason, I didn’t stop there.

“And well, a really horrible thing happened to him because he was crucified on this cross—which, means, uh, he was nailed to it—really, really horrible thing to do to someone, really awful—and well, he died on the cross and so today, the cross remains a symbol of Christianity to remind us of Jesus Christ.”

I smiled weakly, wondering when I was going to have my parent license revoked. Silas went back to playing, seemingly untraumatized. He’ll probably bring it up in therapy one day.

Since then, I’ve fielded the sex questions, the evolution questions (the latest: if humans evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?)—but the death discussions are still the toughest. Luckily, Silas, at 8, has taken these questions on as all-knowing older brother who bluntly gives the life news to Moss, who’s now four. Of late, he’s been coaching him in the fact that the meat we eat used to be a living animal.

So when we were having fish tacos the other night at my parents’ house, Moss looked up from the delicious, beer-battered crisp halibut, and asked, “Are these dead-fish tacos?”

Yes, Moss, I said. 

Luckily, there was no follow-up question. We just left it at that.

I want to fix some Dead Fish Tacos the next time our grandsons (now 19 and 23) visit Glen Ellen. And I love Baja-style deep-fried fish tacos more than any others, but I don’t deep fry anything any more. It’s too messy; too dangerous, too unhealthy. And now that there’s confusion about whether your health is seriously impacted by using lots of seed-based oils (I normally use sunflower oil), I’m even more hesitant.

Frying the fish in a skillet is fine, but I wanted to try an oven-based recipe. It’s not the same as a Baja taco, but it’s d-lish. Instead of Dead Fish Tacos, we’ll call them Born-Again Fish Tacos! 🙂