I am generous in many areas of my life. I enjoy giving gifts to my close friends and family, and still adore shopping for just the right birthday or friendship card. I gladly help someone who might need my support, whether it is a ride, a meal sent to her house, or just an ear for listening.

I am also a recovering burned-toast-syndrome woman (literally and figuratively), someone who, for countless years, ate the overly blackened leftover toast while I made fresh, golden-brown squares for my sons and husband, for I felt that they deserved the better version. This putting-others-first attitude transferred into unnecessary forced self-deprivation. This was my younger self, but in my later years, as a mother of adult children and seeing the years ahead quickly disappearing, I have spent more time focused my own needs with time to write, solitary walks, and reading on my swing chair. In most all areas of my life, I am naturally giving of myself and my time, but, quite frankly, I do not enjoy sharing food.

Thankfully, my children have not inherited my food stinginess; they inherited their father’s generosity of all things edible. His common mantra is: “Here, try this?” At meals, my sons and their families’ forks fly among them, their partners, and their children. Everyone divides their delectables into portions for others. They are doing it right, more graciously and generously than their mother.

“I’ll order the pasta, and you order the calamari. Then we’ll split both,” says one couple.

“I’ll order the steak, and you order the lamb, and we will each have half,” adds the other son and his wife.

And, their kids follow suit, “Can I try that eel roll, Mom?”

Of course, she is thrilled to pass the sushi from her plate to her daughter’s mouth. How glorious for them. Sometimes my husband wants to share a salad and pizza. At times (when I am not exceptionally hungry), I agree, but most times, I talk myself down from the internal ledge of not “owning” my own pizza when I oddly cannot eat it all anyway. Horrors to admit, I am selfish with my fare, even with my artichokes, my coveted vegetable!

Besides my challenges in sharing food, size matters greatly to me. I must have the biggest piece of whatever I am eating. Ironically, my eating disorder of deprivation lies in direct contrast to my deep and consistent desire for the largest chocolate sundae if two are presented on the table, the most chocolate in the two chocolate chip cookies (and of course, the largest of the cookies), and the most gigantic of the two malt balls, meticulously measured side by side. I even secretly use my peripheral vision to see the size of my husband’s slice of meatball and mushroom pizza. I have to make sure that my next slice is bigger if I don’t have the largest now, my internal voice reassures me.

When my parents hosted a dinner party and would receive a box of chocolate honeycomb as a hostess gift, I welcomed the guests and slowly snuck into my bedroom holding the precious box of gift-wrapped squares of crunchy, foam-like candy coated in a thick layer of milk chocolate from Shaw’s, the famous San Francisco ice cream and candy store. Upon opening the gifted chocolates, my 10-year-old self poured every piece out on my twin bed‘s floral bedspread and measured each chocolate square by size. I took the three largest for myself and placed the rest of the candy back in the box for my parents and brother. What justified horror was plastered on my mother’s face when she entered my room and saw my party-night ritual for any treat they received (especially honeycomb)!

“What are you doing? Don’t do that, Barbara. You have touched all the pieces.”

Too late, my internal voice retorted. I felt not one ounce of guilt knowing Mom would eat the candy anyway.

“You don’t have to find the biggest piece.” Oh, yes, but I do, Mom.

I ignored my mother’s future demands to keep all candy boxes wrapped until after the party. In this sense, I was naughty, but I always found the enormous pieces for myself. And this ritual has continued. While I don’t pour out the candy onto my bed, I have mastered the ability to judge my desired food targets with just a glance. After all, I am quite adept at sizing up food.

When there are two bagels to choose from, I choose the largest and the biggest—the same for bananas, even when I can’t finish one. The roundest and most generously cut apple slice, even when I don’t enjoy eating an entire apple. Size does matter with Barbara’s food.

I have gotten better in my “largest obsession” because I don’t want to waste food. I now give my husband the largest chunk of steak, 2/3 for him and 1/3 for me…that’s recovery from “the biggest syndrome.” But, deep inside, I use self-talk to let go of the bigger piece of steak as I place it onto his plate. I don’t need all that meat, I remind myself. Plus, he enjoys it.

But when we order dessert, the five words I still detest are, "Do you want to share?" My internal voice shouts,* No, way!* We have been married for almost five decades. I didn’t want to share when I was 22, and I certainly don’t want to share now. What I would like to do is enter the restaurant’s kitchen, cut myself the largest piece of cheesecake, and bring Paul the leftover sliver. But, instead, I smile with imaginary daggers and say, “I’ll take a bite…you enjoy.”

One of our sons comes for dinner. I place each of our salads on the table. “Looks like Dad got the biggest salad.” I smile with smug pride, knowing in some way, my desire for the biggest is now within another generation. Could it be genetics?