Om Nom Nom

I have fallen in love.  The object of my affection is, I'll grant you, a trifle more cerulean than my usual crushes.  He's got more fur and fewer pronouns.  His sock puppet physique and lurching gait  distinguish him in the panoply of my unrequited tendres.

Oh, Cookie Monster.  It's you.  

As a child, I found Cookie Monster terrifying.  I much preferred Big Bird, whose dutiful monologues mirrored my own conscientiousness, or Bert and Ernie, whose gentle yet unremitting conflict, as eternal as the tangling of night and day, echoed my family life.

Cookie monster's untrammeled appetite disturbed me.  His frenzy was too close to my experience of childhood, the way feelings like sadness and fear and especially rage would devour me, roaring and gobbling, until there were only crumbs.

As a preschooler, you struggle to control your emotions.  As an adult, loss of control is a luxury you cannot afford.

I think this is why, as I approach middle age, I find Cookie Monster thrilling.  He arrives.  He eats.  He vamooses.  His life is a paean to unchecked desire at a time when my own life, as working parent of small children, is a giant to-do list.  Cookie monster does not interrogate or modulate or dissemble or temper or reflect.  He does not take deep breaths or put on his game face or do what he has to do. He simply shows up and eats all the cookies. It's dynamite!

In my real life, I'm on a diet.  No cookies or alcohol or sweets of any kind as I attempt to shed post-pregnancy weight.  But in my heart- oh, in my heart, I'm devouring.