Dinnertime

Because clearly I have a strong sadomasochistic streak, when it seems even remotely feasible, I try to have dinner together as a family. Sometimes, when I have been working all afternoon, and come back home right at six, and the girls have not seen Ben all day, and the dogs have not been fed or walked, and the girls are overtired, and I haven't prepared any food in advance, it is almost as though a neon sign is hanging in the kitchen doorway, a sign that reads: This. Is. A. Very. Bad. Idea.  But often I do it anyway.

Tonight, for example, the apartment was a mess, I was exhausted and had a lot on my mind, Lily was yawning already at 5, and I insisted--to myself--on making the shrimp scampi and snow peas I had planned at a rare mellow moment over the weekend. By the time we sat down at 6:45, 15 minutes before I like to start bedtime, the dogs had managed to steal a number of shrimp tails, Annika had managed to eat a piece of the travel Connect Four game, and Lily had managed to bring half of her bedroom into the living room as part of her new "I am going to Mexico" game, which I like to call "How to Make as Giant a Mess as Possible Involving Everything We Own."

We sat down. Lily requested water and milk and proceeded to balance both cups on the very edge of the table, looking at me sideways as she did so. Annika downed her pasta and shrimp in three seconds and then started shrieking. There was a comment by the aforementioned patience-tester about "this shape of pasta, which is not my exact favorite shape," which was met by a stare so frosty it should have left icicles on the speaker's eyelashes, but instead set off a monologue on how "little bits of green stuff" so often ruin otherwise delicious food. Annika stuffed all her snowpeas into her cup and then tried to drink them. This made even me laugh, irritable as I was, causing her to repeat the sequence over and over again, allowing Lily to distract us from the fact that she had eaten precisely nothing. 

I looked around. The floor was coated with a light layer of dog hair and chewed-up snowpea bits, rejected by the canine cleanup squad. Lily and Annika were dressed in half-costume/half-pajama ensembles with bunches of their hair pulled back in elastics, thanks to Lily's newfound interest in hair accessories. The lights were off in the small living room because the wiring had blown, and the floor in there was covered with pieces of toys. Annika was shrieking again. Lily still hadn't eaten a bite of her dinner, which Ben was hungrily eyeing. I had a big glass of wine in front of me, bags under my eyes and part of Annika's earlier banana rubbed into my sweater and pants. The dogs lay on either side of the high chair. As I watched, Annika threw down a shrimp. They both lunged.

I suspect I am meant to think that someday, when I am very old and sitting alone in front of a television set with a tray on my lap, I will look back on these meals and long for the days of chaos and mess. I might; some part of me probably will. But another part of me might sink deep into my cushy recliner chair, in my clean, unsnotted on robe, and breathe a satisfying sigh of relief. I'm just saying.