A little brandy

Growing up, my dad asked me each year to choose a restaurant on my birthday. Anywhere I wanted to go.

The Blade and Barrel was always my choice. They had lobster.

When I was only a toddler, my parents hosted their first ‘post-baby’ party. They had heard that a little brandy in the nighttime bottle made children sleep. If a little is good, a lot is better. As I waved goodbye to the last guest and wiped the butter off my chin from the lobster tail that would have been my dad’s, I was hooked or, more accurately, trapped.

Each year I chose that lobster.

To this day, I love lobster. We travelled as a family to the east coast of Canada and I ate it every day. Naming each of them Lobby the Lobster before they were submersed in the boiling water. No one else would even try. Is it the claws or the antennae, the eyeballs or the multiple legs? I can’t figure it out. What I see is a sweet, buttery treat, they see as an ugly prehistoric plate adornment.

I still choose that lobster.

Now if I have it, I have to cook it and crack it open outside so no one sees or smells the evidence. Still they complain. I am the one with cold lobster on my plate as they dig into their steaks. Where is the justice in that? At least I have butter, and lots of it. That’s something.

Now lobster means scrunched up faces and ‘ew mum’. The excitement is gone. Also gone is the Blade and Barrel. Guess lobster isn’t for everyone. More for me.