Decide to make turkey tacos. Set your laptop on top of the microwave, open to the Food Network recipe you've selected. Smile inside, maybe a little smugly, about how you will be using vegetables from your CSA for these tacos. Touch lovingly the dirt-smudged skin of the onion, the green hulk of the zucchini. Set up a Paul Simon Pandora station, begin to saute in rhythm to a song that sounds like something Paul Simon might have written if he had a sore throat or no hands. There is a tugging at your pants. Look down into the big eyes of the baby who is not really a baby anymore. Open the doors of the cabinet in which you've stocked only baby-proof items. Tupperware and packets of tea and Emergen-C. From the other room there is the sound of the five-year-old flopping onto the leather of the couch. Keep chopping. The baby flings the tupperware about the room and then lays on his back, crying for no apparent reason. Say to the baby: "Can you find the piggy?" and point toward the magnetic farm adhered to the refrigerator that sometimes randomly makes oinking noises when you take out a piece of pre-sliced cheese late at night. The baby keeps crying and begins to move his legs so it looks like he is back-stroking across the kitchen floor. Say: "Daughter! Can you find something to do with your brother?" Five-year-old enters with the wooden recorder from who-knows-where that tastes like patchouli when you play it. Five-year-old is playing it. Baby stops crying for no reason, brings himself to feet and waves his hands in air. Sister dances around not giving baby recorder and baby begins to cry for an actual reason.
Peak head into living room. Husband reading "Entertainment Weekly." Carry baby into living room and deposit on rug near husband. Return to kitchen. Attempt to look sunny and pleased when daughter asks if she can help. Dump olive oil and salt in a bowl and let her spread mixture on tortillas with a little brush. Someone who is not Paul Simon is whistling and singing about trains. Add 2/3 cup broth to the sauted vegetables. While you wait for sauce to thicken set out plates and sour cream, CSA greens and a bib for the baby. Ignore the heavy yellow sheen of oil soaking into all the tortillas. Place them in the oven. Stir the sauce and notice that it is not thickening. Announce loudly that dinner will be ready in five minutes. Cut avocado while five-year-old rocks back and forth on step stool chanting "Mama, mama, mama, mama" and baby, after re-entering kitchen, attempts to use his head to bulldoze your feet. Note for three seconds the pleasure of scooping out a neat row of avocado pieces with your thumb.
Stir the sauce again. Note that there is no thickening, that you've created seasoned meat and veggies swimming in broth. Decide to serve it anyway. With a slotted spoon. Ask your husband to prepare the drinks. Remove the tortillas from the oven and sprinkle two with cheese. Return to oven. Buckle baby into chair. Bark at five-year-old until she sits on bench in breakfast nook where you eat all your meals because it's too much work to carry everything the extra five feet to the dining room. Say table prayer with baby screaming, five-year-old pushing index finger into piece of avocado and husband tipping box of wine toward coffee cup with the insignia of college where you teach upon it.
Take melted cheese tortillas out of oven. Sit down. Cut tortilla into pieces with pizza cutter for baby. When five-year-old tries taco meat and says in a whiny voice "I don't really like it, Mama," say "thanks for trying it!" in a falsely bright voice. When baby screams and flings bits of avocado on the floor exchange The Look with your husband, The Look that means my-God-we-are-lucky-to-have-children-and-we-love-them-so-much-but-why-is-each-meal-such-a-shit-show-is-it-too-late-to-live-in-Victorian-times-when-we-would-only-see-our-children-occasionally-after-they-had-been-bathed? When five-year-old slides from bench onto floor, let your husband tell her to sit on her bottom please. Ignore the fact that she is not eating but instead deflating each of the air bubbles in the tortilla with her fork. When she says, "Mama, put your finger in here," say "I'm eating my food right now."
Remember to take a bite.
No comments:
Post a Comment