One Banana Peel at a Time

I suspect there are probably people out there who do not feel the need to be constantly seeking out the dark underbelly of their own lives, people who are not obsessed with saving the world with their every little action.  For entertainment, they go and watch a nice little action flick, and they happily drink their over-sized pop and eat another form of high fructose corn syrup.  If they are hungry, they eat whatever is handy, and they are not consequently consumed by massive amounts of guilt.  They probably just toss their apple core in the garbage when they are finished, if, it so happened, an apple was what was most convenient.  These are probably people it is very easy to stay married to.  I suspect that every now and then my husband might like to live this way.  I think this because once upon a time we were interested in save-the-world documentaries but would also go out for a completely carnivorous meal, including bacon in the dessert.  And because the other day, when I was not home in time to prepare lunch in advance, I caught him putting a number of meat-free leftovers on a plate next to some chicken, and then adding ham to the previously meat-free dishes!  I, of course, thought this was some sort of passive-aggressive way of getting back at me for suddenly removing meat from the family diet, but I have since come to believe that his explanation was sincere: he added ham to the mac-n-cheese because it was there and because ham in mac-n-cheese is good.  (Side note: I do not consider mac-n-cheese a healthy food.  I made it as a concession to my daughter who is, after all, only three, and thinks mac-n-cheese is the height of delicious meat-free cuisine.  So I was already fallen off my high horse when this occurred, yet I was still miffed.)  He wasn’t out to ruin society or poison our children or even to annoy me.  He just wanted to take a break from saving the world and eat some comfort food like the good ol’ days.  I tend to take everything seriously.    

Poor man.  There was a time when he was a biology major with a particular interest in ecology.  He was dating a nice little English major with a particular interest in women’s issues, religion, music, and ecology.  We went about our ordinary lives finishing college and getting married.  We lived in an apartment for a couple of years and wished we had a garbage disposal.  Oh, wouldn’t life be easy with a garbage disposal?  It was all about easy then.  Although he taught science and we both liked nature, we did not go to extraordinary measures to do anything about environmental issues.  We maybe donated to some causes.  We were not inconvenienced much though.  In fact, when we bought our first house, it came with a little compost bin out in the back corner of the back yard.  We had no idea what to do with it, and it smelled a little, so we took it out, spread around the contents, and planted a small garden atop the soil which we assumed was probably a bit better for growing things.  We didn’t know.  We didn’t particularly bother to find out either.  The rabbits ate everything we planted because we didn’t bother to put up impenetrable fencing.

And now.  Now it’s one thing after another.  There is no easy any more.  We recycle everything, a practice which is cleverly encouraged by our city’s waste removal plan.  Recycling is free; garbage removal must be paid by the container.  So no biggy.  Then a few years ago I acquired a bin of worms so we could do vermicomposting in our basement.  Yes, this started to cross the line into unusual, but although I was not always doing the things I am now doing, I was always a little intense and unusual.  So my vermicomposting thing was met with little more than a raised eyebrow and a bit of teasing.  I was due for some new obsession.  Of course, once we started composting, my eyes were opened to how much composting we could actually be doing.  We each eat a banana every morning with breakfast, for example.  In a week, that’s 28 banana peels.  They can either go in the garbage and add to the mountain of garbage not-quite-rotting in the plastic bags in landfills, or they could be composting and making the world more beautiful.  Since we are going to keep eating the bananas, the peels could be something slightly bad or something slightly good.  Maybe one banana peel doesn’t make much difference either way.  But maybe 28 peels a week does.  Maybe 1460 peels a year does make a difference over a lifetime.  Regardless of how much difference it makes, it came down to a choice: in this tiny thing, do good or do harm.  I chose composting.  Then add in the potato peels, the carrot peels, the apple cores, the lettuce we didn’t eat before it started to go bad: the worms, it turned out, couldn’t keep up.  So I bought a big compost container for the back yard.  Ah, now I see what that was about.  Too bad it took me a few years to get back to where I could have been when we bought our first house.  Husband went along with this new commitment to composting.  Having carried the tub of worms to the basement, he then went to pick up the compost bin from the university extension office.  For Christmas that year  he bought me a nice little bucket for the kitchen counter with charcoal filters, so the whole kitchen doesn’t need to smell like rotting fruit.  At first, I think he missed the ease of just throwing everything in the garbage.  I would frequently find rotting banana peels on the counter after breakfast.  I pointed out that throwing them in the bin on the counter was actually less time and effort than walking to the garbage can, and I’ve not heard any complaints. 

Then I started to get annoyed with things we were still needlessly throwing away.  My husband is a lifelong devotee to the plastic zip-lock bag.  This is both a nature and a nurture inheritance from his parents.  All left-overs are placed in plastic bags at their house.  To travel, everything is placed in a separate plastic bag.  And, I kid you not, their banana peels are sealed in plastic newspaper sleeves before they are thrown away.  For the sake of maintaining family relationships, I aggressively bite my tongue and lips and occasionally a few fingers every time we visit.  To some people the plastic bag is the epitome of all that the modern age can deliver in terms of sanitation and convenience, and I married into a family of those people.  So cutting down our use of them was an uphill long-term battle.  I would point out that things could be put in washable containers.  I bought sandwich-shaped containers for the lunchboxes.  My sister-in-law even caught onto my intentions and for Christmas gave me reusable, dish-washer safe food bags.  I knew last night that my transformation in that department was going well when my mom was helping my son pack up some game pieces for the purpose of transporting them to school the next day.  She told him to go ask daddy for four sandwich baggies.  Husband did not just hand over the baggies but questioned why they were needed and why so many.  My mom said, “They’re just plastic sandwich bags.”  Ah, the taste of revolution in the early evening.

I started in on the second wonder of the modern age, and something on which we used to spend a good deal of money: the paper towel.  Thanks to husband’s influence, we used to use several rolls of paper towels a week.  We used them to clean counters, clean stove and microwave, clean bathrooms, dust, and clean off kids.  The last item there was a big one.  Husband used at least one per kid per meal.  It made the decision to stop reproducing one that would save hundreds of trees.  At first he was leary of the washcloth thing.  Not very sanitary.  I promised him, though, that I would WASH the washcloths and that he could use one per kid per meal and another for counters.  Or, more accurate, I would use a separate cloth to clean the counters.  I bought several bunches of washcloths, and lo!  We hardly ever have to buy paper towels.  Of course, now we have piles of wet washcloths on the counter, but at least we are not needlessly consuming and disposing.  Then we moved to cloth napkins too, although I don’t quite have enough of those yet, so we still supplement with disposable.

All well and good, until I messed with my most lovable quality as a wife: the delicious (and, we thought, healthy) dinner.  Good cooking can make up for a multitude of quirks.  I started to really get into the politics and purpose of food.  For reasons that are both self-serving (i.e. health related) but also economic and ecological, I have stopped purchasing or serving meat to my family, and I have stopped eating it completely.  From what I’ve seen and read, it seems that eating meat is a habit that is neither healthy nor sustainable.  We already eat very little processed food, and most of that is not purchased or endorsed by me.  For the most part, the effort I put into making most of what we eat from scratch has been appreciated.  We joined a CSA to do a better job both with eating whole vegetables and with eating locally.  Still, the no meat thing still came as something of a shock.  I think it seemed like one dietary restriction too many.  We already have wheat, dairy, egg, tree nut, peanut, and fish allergies to deal with.  Take out all animals as well, and we’re left eating…well, pretty much exactly what most non-corporate sponsored experts agree is a very healthy diet.  Expressed that way, it doesn’t seem like such a radical move. 

In practice, however, it turned out to feel very counter-cultural.  It’s pretty difficult to eat that way anywhere but in my own kitchen.  On a little three day vacation, I was not the one in charge of packing meals, and such meals have always been heavily centered around the main dish: meat.  So that was tricky.  I was a little hungry, but for once I didn’t complain.  Eating out is nearly impossible.  Go to Chili’s or Cracker Barrel or Colonial and try to eat vegan or even vegetarian.  All of the salads have meat on them.  The vegetable side dishes are cooked with meat or meat fat.  There are entire roads full of restaurants where a person trying to eat only or even mostly plants couldn’t find a bite to eat.

Even at home, it’s not so easy.  It’s a hard change to fight off a lifetime of nutritional training, quietly but heavily subsidized by the meat and dairy industries.  A few nights ago my son said of the “main dish” (a concept I am trying to phase out), “Do I have to eat this, since I already ate my vegetables and this is vegetables too?”  And he’s only six.  (A week or two later he tried a more suave tactic: “Mom, this looks so good, I don’t even want to eat it!”)  It’s also hard to set aside years and years worth of acquired favorite recipes.  Because of the various dietary and allergy issues of my loved ones, I have always been aware of how eating differently from others becomes a social issue, but I did not realize how very awkward being vegetarian would feel.  After surgery this week, a friend offered to bring lunch.  I wanted to accept, and I did, but I had to mention I was vegetarian and if that was too inconvenient, I would just like the company.  It feels like a constant series of dilemmas.  Every day.  Every meal.  I believe, though, that as we get used to it, it will start to feel more natural.

Yesterday, as I was making homemade granola bars while standing on one foot  (yes, I’m that far over the top,) I got to thinking about all of the stuff we do that started out feeling uncomfortable or difficult:  cutting out wheat, milk, eggs, fish and nuts.  Composting.  Cloth napkins and washcloths.  Reusable containers.  Unprocessed food.  No animals.  Little TV and no commercials.  And why do we do these tiny, nagging, daily things?  They are very small things, each of them, and the problems of the world are very big.  Sure it’s not fair for me to eat meat when the land used to feed my meat could feed six other people instead.  But will the meat I am not eating really be noticed?  Will the meat industry scale down it’s operation because one person abstained from their products?  Not likely.  Have I saved six people who would otherwise starve to death?  Not necessarily.  Is there any guarantee that if I eat well I will not suffer from some terrible disease?  Of course not.  So sometimes, the siren song of convenience is very powerful.  What if we just went back to living like everyone else?  Would it really make a difference?

For me, the answer is yes, it makes a difference.  For one thing, every change must begin somewhere, and I am not the first.  I recently watched Food Inc, which has the potential to be incredibly discouraging.  How can one person ever succeed against corporations that own everything, including the government and regulatory bodies?  Well, if we’re talking about changing the world, one person can’t.  But one person can and must and every day does take a stand on one side or the other.  In a capitalist society, one person votes with her dollar.  If I start buying organic produce, and others start buying organic produce, the grocery stores will buy more organic produce.  More organic farms will become financially viable.  It might happen.  But if I do nothing, why should anyone else?  I cannot change the whole world, but I can change one person, and, seeing that I am the one who makes the meals around here, I can maybe change four people, or at least exert some heavy influence.  And I have a few similarly nutty friends taking the journey with me.  Why should I expect more of others than I expect of myself? 

But it’s more than being the first to take a stand; it’s more than being the last straw; it’s more than being a drop in a bucket.  You get the idea.  There is one thing that gets completely transformed by the daily decision to be a little different and inconvenient and annoying.

C. S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, suggests that hell is not something into which a person is cast by an angry God.  In his version of heaven, everyone gets to make the choice: heaven or hell.  The thing is, all the decisions you made during your earthly life have prepared you to make that final decision.  I see it like training for a triathlon.  Sure, it’s possible that if you spend decades sitting on your recliner eating chips and never go swimming or biking or running, you might possibly be able to slog your way through, say, an Ironman, if your immortal soul depended on it.  But probably not.  And more importantly, you might not even have the courage to try it.  Likewise, if you spend a lifetime not caring, going along with what’s “normal” or what’s easy or what just happens without a lot of introspection, well, you might not be ready to choose correctly when it comes time to do so.  It’s practice.  It’s training.  Sure, it’s tiring and time-consuming and doesn’t leave much time for watching TV or shopping, and yes, I still remember how delicious meat can be.  But with each little decision (garbage or compost, homemade or processed, more laundry or more trash, what’s available or what’s counter-cultural) I get a little more used to making choices based less on what’s easy or comfortable and more on what I believe to truly be responsible and compassionate and good.

I doubt that Jesus is ever going to speak to me and ask me if I recycled and composted and ate in an environmentally sustainable way.  Those are real issues, but they are my issues, specific to my circumstances, my location in history and geography, the choices I have the power to make.  People with fewer or greater resources or different political or environmental situations and responsibilities might have different issues entrusted to them.  No, the question Lewis is talking about is not part of a standardized test, and we don’t all need to study the same stuff.  But from what I can tell, the thing that is always the same about questions Jesus puts to people is whether or not they are willing to walk away from what’s easy and normal and comfortable for the sake of doing what’s impossible and crazy and inconvenient and caring.  I like to think of myself in training, one banana peel at a time.