Maurice Sendak and applesauce

 The title of this blog is taken from Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are": as Max leaves for home, the Wild Things say "Oh please don't go - we'll eat you up we love you so!". 

There is just so much in this story and in this somewhat gruesome idea. I'm sure someone has analyzed this Caldecott-winning children's book to death, it was published in 1963, but so much of my parenting hopes and dreams are tied up in this beautiful book.

There is a scientific reason why we have that feeling. That urge to bite your kids. I know it isn't just me. You see those fat cheeks and sweet smile and you just oooooh want to eat them up. Studies link this to emotional regulation: you are so overwhelmed with positive feeling that your body has to release it, usually with this wonky expression of aggression. 

Max is a wild kid who gets in trouble for being wild, and spend his evening regulating those feelings through his imagination. Amidst his antics, he tells his mom "I'LL EAT YOU UP", just as his monsters tell him when he tries to leave their make-believe island. So much of caring for little humans is trying to remember that crazy acts of high emotions and aggression are bids for more connection. That they somehow need you more when they scream "I'LL EAT YOU UP". 

This story has deep imagination, emotional regulation, and a hot meal. All of the things I want for my three boys. Cute aggression. Aggressive love and space to express it. This was the first book I memorized to tell them in the dark. With roaring and menacing eyes, claws. 

O and I made applesauce while the twins slept. He used his whole little body to cut those apples, and hot, sticky applesauce splattered the kitchen. I rinsed the food mill and looked back to see him now naked, fingers covered in sauce that he was eating from the huge steel bowl. He skipped dinner and "we" cleaned up, but the house smelled like the applesauce days of my own childhood for hours.

... it would be two more days before I got around to canning it. The other apples from our picking trip are gathering more lazy fruit flies by the day.