{"id":10433,"date":"2020-04-10T19:58:27","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T19:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/?p=10433"},"modified":"2020-04-10T20:08:36","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T20:08:36","slug":"how-the-egg-came-to-be-eaten-a-myth-of-my-own-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/2020\/04\/how-the-egg-came-to-be-eaten-a-myth-of-my-own-making\/","title":{"rendered":"How the egg came to be eaten (a myth of my own making)"},"content":{"rendered":"

How the egg came to be eaten<\/strong><\/p>\n

Certain foods have their reputes. Oysters.
\nGinseng. You can guess why the tomato,
\nfragile as a beating heart, is
\nthe apple of love.<\/p>\n

The egg used to
\nbe more potent, but on a laconic
\nday when the spring buds sighed amid a dank
\nappeal to dormancy, with Persephone
\njust on her way back, Hera decided
\nit was time her mate learn to appreciate
\nher. She fed Zeus the first egg, knowing it
\nwould give him a woman\u2019s pain.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d forgiven
\nhim for Leda, at least put it out of
\nher mind for she could understand, knew herself
\nof sweetness rising in the bud. Infidelity
\nshe could take. This goddess
\nwould be first to admit virility
\nhas its place. No, Zeus offended her
\nmost when he bullied and dismissed her. So
\nshe fixed him a breakfast, served it up with
\nambrosia, promised a later sweet.<\/p>\n

First in
\nthe pan, golden oil from the sweet
\ndark olive, and then the egg, still warm from
\nbeing laid, sun shining in the griddle.
\nZeus devoured it: the perfect cycle
\nof heavens and earth. He ran
\nhis finger over the plate,
\nand licked it clean.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long before
\nhe felt the first pains, twenty minutes apart,
\nbut a twinge compared with those that came later
\nwhen he felt as if he were cleaving open.
\nIt wasn\u2019t until he had the need to
\nbear down that Hera let him in on her trick
\nto make the pain that much more. Sure, he
\nhad Athena, but full grown and sprung
\nfrom his head, so let him see how a woman
\nhas a child.<\/p>\n

Femininity
\nwas not familiar to him and motherhood
\neven hazier as his own swapped him for
\na stone. Growing up in a cave where battles
\nclashed each time he cried Zeus learned nothing
\nof fatherhood either so you can be
\nsure Hera\u2019s trick gave him only pain.
\nShe knew he would try to choke down
\nany children.<\/p>\n

But despite this barren labor,
\nhours after eating the egg, Zeus felt the
\nsadness of maternity, that feeling unlike
\nany other, the inevitable, that of
\ncreating and letting go. Hera hoped
\nby eating from her dish Zeus would feel
\na bond but he was good at denial and
\nthough he had felt the pangs he later would
\nnot admit their effect and made less and less
\nof his first egg.<\/p>\n

Ever after, he could eat
\nthem without incident and often he mocked
\nthe cow-eyed goddess, saying she whimpered
\nlike a sotted cat. So now when the forsythia
\nare yellow but the lilac has not yet
\nbloomed, when the smell of green is light
\nand Demeter just deigned to walk
\nour woods, Zeus looks down
\nto one mother and kills her child to show
\nHera that all can be lost, just like that.
\nBecause life, he wants her to remember,
\nis fragile as an egg.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a9 Ellen Wade Beals<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Egg \u00a9 Ellen Wade Beals, 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the egg came to be eaten Certain foods have their reputes. Oysters. Ginseng. You can guess why the tomato, fragile as a beating heart, is the apple of love. The egg used to be more potent, but on a laconic day when the spring buds sighed amid a dank appeal to dormancy, with Persephone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1509,3629,1508,12,3631,3627,3628,39,3632,13,7,16,32,3630],"class_list":{"0":"post-10433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-easter","8":"tag-eating-eggs","9":"tag-eggs","10":"tag-ellen-wade-beals","11":"tag-hera","12":"tag-myth","13":"tag-myth-making","14":"tag-photography","15":"tag-poems-about-food","16":"tag-poetry","17":"tag-solace","18":"tag-solace-in-so-many-words","19":"tag-weighed-words","20":"tag-zeus","21":"entry","22":"has-post-thumbnail"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10433"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10439,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433\/revisions\/10439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}