Dinner

So, dinner. Occurring regularly since the dawn of time, this most primeval activity happens without forethought or preparation when you are a child. At Mom’s and Dad’s house, the magic dinner fairies wave their wooden spoons and dinner appears, hot and fresh and ready to consume at a beautifully set table.

As a parent trying to replicate this glorious occurrence in your own home, you learn that the dinner fairies are dead, for they cannot survive outside of their natural environment of your parents’ house, and that when you tried to plead and wheedle to get them to come, you have only infuriated the Supreme Dinner Being who will now and forever muddle up your brain as you try to plan a menu. “Ground beef? What am I supposed to do with ground beef?! There’s not a recipe in the world that uses such a ridiculous ingredient!” But you do the best you can to feed your family and keep the illusion alive so that when they move out, your poor unsuspecting children will be greeted with the same dead fairy reality that you were.

In spite of this magical handicap, we were making dinner a few days ago for some friends who have just had a baby. As usually happens under these circumstances, the pressure is on to get the friends’ dinner done and so your own kids have to wait, hungry and pleading as you scream in a flour-coated, stress-filled voice, “No! You can’t eat anything! Darn it all! I’m trying to be nice to other people!” (At least, this ridiculous scenario happens too often in my house. Maybe, hopefully, not in yours.)

Anyway, we got the friends’ dinner done on time, it looked terrific, and the dessert had turned out divinely, so I was very proud of myself as we drove it over to them. Because they’re fairly good friends and we were not staying long, only dropping the food off, I permitted us all to go without shoes on, thinking, “It’s fine. This is just a fun, friendly, casual thing.” We take the food inside and as Josh is driving us home, I put my feet up for a moment to enjoy feeling good.  This forces my pants into view for apparently the first time in a decade, and I realize I have orange jello crusted down one entire leg of my capris and it has somehow dripped onto my skin without me realizing. Oh my. Ok. I probably shouldn’t have gone into their house like that.  As I continue my now-embarrassed search, I realize I have a giant black schmear across the other leg, from who-knows-what and having been there for heaven-knows-how-long.

At this point I’m replaying the conversation with our friends in my head. As I happily announce their delectable dinner and with it, implied confidence that it was prepared in a clean, healthy kitchen, I change their response from, “Wow. This looks delicious. That Sephonnie sure has it all together,” to “Aaahh!! Why aren’t you wearing shoes! And look at your legs! Put the food down and go take a shower, woman!”

We get home and trying to forget about this less-than-impressive debut, I busy myself finishing up our dinner. The kids have decided on spaghetti, so I put the noodles on to boil and tidy up the kitchen while we wait. The timer goes off and I secure the fancy drainer lid to the pot and pour out the cooking water. And then I go to take the lid off. In the mere 13 seconds the lid has been on the pot, it has apparently decided to weld itself to its partner and take up permanent residence there. The lid will not come off. I’m struggling and squeezing and turning and banging the pot against the sink. It will not come off. I run water over it. I get a giant butcher knife out and try to pry it off. It will not budge. At this point I am praying and near hysterical crying. It’s getting late, Josh is gone, and it appears there will be no dinner for anyone. Ever. The kids have caught on to my distress and are alternately weeping helplessly, “What about our dinner??” and rummaging through the drawers for every sharp kitchen object they can find – meat forks, steak knives, can openers – to assist me in this wretched noodle pot battle. In an effort to frighten the lid off, Felicity also gets out two pot lids and begins enthusiastically smashing them together, effectively making road kill out of my last remaining nerves and tolling the death knoll for all happiness everywhere. Just when I’m ready to throw the pot through the window and go get us all Happy Meals, something unhooks and the lid finally slides off. Exhausted, I dump their noodles and sauce in a bowl and settle on Reese’s Peanut Butter footballs for my own evening fare.

Going out to eat is not better for us. I’ve heard we’re not alone in this trial, and I’m not sure if the terrified looks we get from older folks and honeymooning couples as we sit in a nearby booth support or discourage this theory. I was at Denny’s with the three kids while we were out of town recently. While waiting for Judsen’s and Felicity’s food to arrive, I decided to give JJ her cereal. I got out the box, mixed some with her veggies, and began to feed her. Everything is going well until Judsen says, “Uh oh. I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to.” I look over and he has knocked down the box of cereal, spilling its contents everywhere and turning our table surface into a vast desert of oatmeal dunes. I reply calmly that it’s okay, I know it was an accident, although I’m not sure if my calmness stems because I’ve done a good job of accepting the reality of dining out with children and I am handling the situation like a pro, or because my mind has finally snapped and I’m just seconds away from grabbing a handful of sugar packets myself and starting an all-out food fight.

Our server comes over to see how we are and Judsen, to his credit, is very sweet about apologizing for the mess. Server starts to assure us it’s fine, it happens all the time, and he’s not offended about cleaning it up, when he looks down to see what exactly has spilled. I see a look of horror in his eyes as he gasps, “What is that?!” Oh, just baby cereal. He seems to calm down at the easy explanation of the foreign substance and heads off to get a rag. As soon as he steps away, Felicity decides to add to the excitement and slosh her pink lemonade onto the table as well, creating a sloppy, gooey stew of oatmeal flakes and soft drink. Poor Server comes back to find an even larger disaster and then returns a third time with an enormous bucket-like saucer to slide the mess into. Poor thing. I should have also encouraged him to find a Haz-Mat suit. Needless to say, we left a very good tip when we were done.

Our younglings have also been known to choke mid-drink and spew milk all over the nearby walls, booths and people (aka The Splash Zone), leave a scrumptious potpourri of half-chewed chicken nuggets, fries, and napkins on the floor, and scribble all over pristine white walls with generously given crayons (ironically delivered to distract the children and keep them from getting into trouble J).

Yes, regardless of where we have it, dinner is an adventure. (We say “adventure” because Horror Story seems too Halloween-y and it’s not even October yet.) But we love our little gourmands and I guess we’ll just keep feeding them, in hopes that science soon figures out how to get those darn dinner fairies to adapt to other surroundings. Perhaps they could breed them with a hardier species, like some kind of dishes-cleaning robot.