Before and After

Flashback to Dinnertime, six years ago. (What follows is the truth, with no exaggeration.)
 
It’s a weekday evening around 7:30 when I turn the door key and enter the snug two-story apartment I share with my very new husband and mute, elderly cat. He’s still at work for at least another hour; I’ve finished my workday and regular sweat session at the gym and still have time to spare before my primetime TV-fest begins. Kitty Poo Poo greets me with her five pounds of quiet, twisting her body through my legs and around my ankles, moving her tiny jaws open and closed in her speechless mew. I drop my gym bag and keys on the doormat and lift her easily, rubbing my nose in her ears as I climb the steps to shower.
 
Fifteen minutes later, we descend the stairs, me in pajamas and wet hair and Kitty at my heels. As we walk to the kitchen, I grab the TV remote from the end table and flick on my channel to let it rev while I cook. In the kitchen, I open cabinets, drawers and the refrigerator and assemble my goods: bowl, box of Cheerios, tablespoon, milk. Kitty waits prissily on her bottom at my feet while I assemble hers: food bowl, pouch of Fancy Feast. I serve her dinner first, then make my own.
 
She eats in the kitchen, I on the couch. She joins me as I put my bowl on the coffee table, settling into a furry black-and-white ball on my chest. The theme song to my favorite sitcom begins.
 
After the first show, my husband comes home. Kitty jumps to greet him and returns to my chest. He kisses me where I lay, then changes into comfortable clothes and sits with us on the oversized chair next to me with a huge blanket and a saucepan of Chunky soup.
 
We watch TV. Sometimes, we order pizza.
 
***
 
Fast-forward to Dinnertime, Present Day. (What follows is the truth, with no exaggeration.)
 
It’s 4:30 in the afternoon. Our first house has replaced our apartment; four- and one-year-old little boys have replaced Kitty Poo Poo, God rest her soul. My office workday has given way to my home workday. My sweat sessions at the gym are infrequent and do not necessitate a gym bag; a plastic grocery bag knotted around dirty diapers waiting to go to the trash sits in place of my blue Nike duffel on the inner doormat. I dropped the house keys near the stinky diaper refuse when I entered an hour ago with my arms full of packages and children. My toddler finds them and sits on the kitchen floor pushing the panic button on my car alarm remote. The car is parked three feet from the kitchen sun doors and it blares like a test of the citywide emergency broadcast system. My son is unfazed. He pushes harder.
 

I turn off the alarm, hang the keys on their hook and give the little guy the TV remote just in time to quell the rising screams.
 
It sounds like this: (I take the keys) “My-eee!  Myyyy-eeeeee!” (I place the keys on the hook) “MYYYY-EEEEE!! MYYYYY-EEEEEEEE!!! MMMM-YYYY-EEEEEE!!!! (I give him the remote) “MY-EEE! My-eeee. My.”
 
I turn to the task and open cabinets, drawers and the refrigerator and stare at my goods trying to figure out what to assemble.
 
Enter the Chatterbox.
 
“What are we having for dinner, Mom? Can I help? I have to wash my hands firtht, right?” He says all this while dragging his little wooden stool, fingernail-chalkboard style, eight feet across the ceramic tile to where I stand at the counter.
 
The water goes on at the sink. “Um, I don’t know yet, Buddy,” I reply, creating fast meal scenarios in my mind, eliminating the least healthy ones. I open the freezer door, frown at the rocks of meat. Close the door. Walk to the pantry, frown at the canned food. Close the door.
 
I look over toward the four seconds of silence at the sink and see my son with the sprayer drawn, cocked and ready to shoot me, a devilish grin revealing his dimples. His eyebrows jump as he fires but his wet fingers fumble the muzzle and the wimpy spray shoots upward in his face. He is shocked at the backfire, he hates water on his face.
 
“Ah! Mom! MOM!” His face crumbles into a cry. “Mom-my, Momm-mmy…” He sobs. “I’m…(sniff)all…(sniff)wet…”
 
I pat dry, cuddle, shoo him away. I open the freezer again and pull out a brick of ground beef, then pop it in the microwave to defrost for ten minutes. I open the pantry again and pluck out a box of elbow macaroni and a jar of marinara sauce. In the fifteen seconds this takes me, my big boy fully recovers and sprints a circle through the kitchen, past the office, through the foyer, around the living room, into the dining room and back through the kitchen, screaming, “CHASE! CHAAAAAAAAAASE!” at a glass-shattering decibel. He does a few more laps, ignoring my gently firm pleas of, “Babe, I need you to calm down a bit while I cook dinner.”

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