Drinking milk makes me gag. I’m not lactose intolerant or anything since I love cheese and all things cream-based, especially soups and sauces, but for some reason, I hate milk. Maybe because I was made to drink it as a small child?

There’s a story in my family that my mother was the first person in Pakistan to pasteurize milk. She and my father had six children, so I gather a lot of milk was required for us. I think the milk in Pakistan in the 60s may not have been that good, so my mother started a dairy farm. I’ve never actually fact-checked this. I mean, I do remember the dairy farm, I just don’t know about the first-person-to-pasteurize-milk part. But I believe it to be true. My mother was smart, assertive, and if she wanted something, she made it happen.

By the time she had me, her sixth child, she had perfected the art of parenting. Instead of doing things for me, like making breakfast, or packing a lunch for school, or helping me with my homework, or telling me to go to bed at a reasonable hour, she had me doing things for her.

For example, it was my job every morning to bring her coffee in bed.  Or I’d have to search the house for her packet of Kent cigarettes when she asked me to. And sometimes I would get the dreaded task of rubbing her feet. I also hate feet. Since I was mostly left to my own devices when I was not fetching something for my mother, no one really noticed that I had stopped drinking milk.

When I was eight years old, by now living in Connecticut, I became concerned that I was not getting enough calcium. So I would go down to the kitchen, alone, and after making my mother her cup of coffee and bringing it to her in bed, I would make myself drink a cup of milk. No one made me do this, and no one was ever in the kitchen to watch me drink it since they were usually lounging around in bed while I got myself ready for school. I would shut my eyes, hold my nose and drink it as fast as I could, trying not to gag. I think this lasted about a week. Now I just take a calcium pill and avoid milk altogether.