Pickled

Disregarding my mother's openness to condiments, seafood, and olives, our tastes developed in alignment with the culinary guidelines set by my father. And although we do diverge from his own tastes as we eat pasta and corn, we will forever hold a shared disdain for pickles. Expressing this to waitstaff, we explicitly detail our collective nausea at the sight and smell, on occasion claiming an allergy, hoping that the threat of medical reaction will keep our plates untainted. Yet after the meal is ordered, and the wait is waited, one pickle appears, always on my mother’s plate. Somehow they know.