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Passover is coming, and so is my Nanna. At 98, an age when most of her contemporaries (I’d say “many” of her contemporaries, except the truth is, Nanna has outlived most of her generation) are in bed or assisted living, my Nanna, Faye Frumin, will board a plane from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Philadelphia, where she will supervise the ritual making of the gefilte fish, one of the centerpieces of the Seder feast.

Four generations — me and my daughters, 10 and 6, my mom and her partner, and Nanna — will gather around the fish grinder. We’ll boil fish heads and skin and bones and tails to make stock; we’ll mix the fillets of whitefish and pike and pickerel with matzo meal and eggs, and form it into miniature loaves to serve at our Seder.

Like many women of my generation and class, I had a difficult relationship with food. For the better part of two decades, I was, if not officially on a diet, then extremely aware of what I’d eaten that day and how I was going to burn it off. I gained and lost the same pounds over and over, and to this day I can tell you how many calories and Weight Watchers points a serving of anything contains, and what it would take to burn them off.

I wanted it to be different for my girls. So I crafted a plan full of “should nots” and “would nots.”

I would not discuss diets in front of my daughters, nor would I engage in negative self-talk in their presence. I would not describe foods as good or bad, or judge myself based on what I’d eaten, or not eaten, on a particular day. Tabloids that ran headlines like “Scary Skinny” or used “balloon” as a verb would be banished, along with reality shows built around the idea that it’s impossible to be both heavy and happy.

What’s surprised me, as the girls have gotten older, is the way food has emerged not as the enemy or a battlefield, but as common ground, the place where we have learned to nourish ourselves.

Ask my daughters about their favorite meal and you might hear a story about the salt marshes in Cape Cod, and how, every summer, we gather a crew of family and friends and go clamming. We pile into kayaks and canoes and paddle through the shallow water, past stands of sea grass and over sand bars, looking for the bubbling air holes that are evidence of a colony of steamers below. Lucy, at 10, is an expert digger. My younger daughter, Phoebe, is the clam girl, running across the sand bars holding the big metal bucket with a loop for making sure the clams are big enough to keep.

We gather mussels, steamers, little necks and Quahogs until the tide comes in and, muddy, scratched and ravenous, we know it’s time to drive back home. Clams and clammers get rinsed in the outdoor shower. Then the cooking begins. Clam chowder, clam pizza, linguine with clam sauce, baked stuffed clams, mussels in pepper-spiked tomato sauce, mussels in cream with leeks and sausage; and, best of all, clams on the grill, cooked over a high flame just until they pop open, served with a squirt of lemon juice and a drizzle of butter, the shells scalding hot, the meat and liquor briny and sweet, like a gulp of the ocean, or summer itself.

Food isn’t trouble, it’s holidays, it’s funny stories, it’s seasons. Clams and beach plums are summer; turkey and crispy, lace-edged latkes mean fall; gefilte fish tells us it’s springtime again. Maybe my daughters won’t eat more than the single bite that I’ll insist on, but the finished dish is only part of the point.

When the world begins to do its work and tells my girls that their bodies are imperfect, unacceptable, and that food is the reason, I hope they’ll remember Passover: the kitchen, redolent with the scent of chicken broth, the windows steamy, folk songs playing, my Nanna showing Phoebe and Lucy how to shape the fish into a patty. I hope they’ll think about digging clams, picking beach plums, popping popcorn and baking pies for the local ag fair’s contest, poring over magazines for recipes, then heading out on foot to the farmer’s market or the Reading Terminal to shop. And they’ll know that calories don’t have to be a source of pain or punishment, but can be an occasion for adventure, for love, for happy memories, and for fun.

Jennifer Weiner is a novelist, television producer, and inveterate tweeter and cultural critic. Her next book, “All Fall Down” will be available in June.