Home cooked

"What's THAT smell?"

It was 5:30. After School Sport #1 was over and there was just enough time to finish math homework and wolf down some form of sustenance before rushing off to make it to After School Sport #2.

It was a hopeful sort of question. A smell that reminds you that hunger can creep up on a person. Another reminder that in the not-too-distant past this time combined with this smell might make a kid guess that dinner was almost ready.

"Your father is making supper," I responded as I hung up the car keys and pulled off my coat. As usual, I have a flair for stating the obvious. The air all around us held a mixture of aromas: tomatoes, garlic, onion. … It is the scent of warmth and comfort.

Modern family life sometimes requires such details to be defined. In our house, The Dad is the chef and sink unclogger. The Mom does the baking, and the driving, and the laundry and the cleaning of the pots and pans. She even does the mowing of the lawns.

But we'll leave that for another season.

Since his departure on business a few weeks ago, The Dad's kitchen has produced only one three-part meal: Baked salmon, lemon asparagus, and rice. It was an unusual Saturday night when the calendar square was uncommonly bare, and an extraordinary effort by The Mom.

For the remainder of his absence, the things we ate that resembled food made their way from freezer to microwave in roughly three-minute intervals six times a day. 

Tasteless, time-conscious tidbits that barely nourish anything. 

"I'd say it was pasta of some kind, but I could be mistaken." 

Of course, I had no first-hand knowledge or proof of purchase in the form of supermarket receipt or empty reusable totes sitting in the hallway waiting to be refolded. 

But my nose told me the meat would be some fancy sausage. Probably the spicy kind, the boy would exile to the edge of his plate before quietly flicking it piecemeal to the pooch. 

He wouldn't complain. 

It's not his style. 

He'll just quietly eat what he likes and visit the kitchen later ... when everyone has moved on from dinner into watching "their" shows. 

He'll find himself a yogurt from the fridge or frozen shrimp from the freezer. A ravenous appetite can be a powerful motivator in learning how to "cook like mom cooks." 

Though some might say "assemble" or "thaw and mix with ramen."

It's only a matter of time until they realize that when left alone, dinner for most moms means stopping at the gas station and picking up a bag of popcorn ... or Funyuns.

Still, we manage to muster enough motherly concern to ask the kids what they had for lunch, and clutch our pearls-less throats when they answer something along the lines of "a bag of Skittles and a Coke."

Our popcorn dinners, we rationalize, have, at the very least, a coating of cheese. We may not be growing children, even if we are expanding as adults.

Of course, we moms aren't fooling anyone.

And then it occurs to me, as he rolls up his sleeves and starts to wash his hands, he's beginning to take after his father.

"Well ... THAT smell is definitely burned popcorn. What do you say we make some potstickers?"

Snap out of it

My husband went to Europe for two weeks, so I bought a new car.

But while The Cat was away on business, The Mouse's old rattle-trap car - which has been patched together with rebuilt parts, spot welding, and duct tape - started to make a noise so heinous and unsettling that the car radio set at its highest volume couldn't drown it out.

OK, the mouse might have panicked. But the Cat was all "It's your cheese. And I really hate car salespeople. I'd look for something new, so you don't have to worry about it."

But worry is my currency. And it was burning a hole in my pocket.

How will I get to work and back? How will I get the kids to play rehearsals and music lessons? To wresting and basketball? What if there is an emergency? The grocery store is only three miles away, but we might as well live on Pluto if my car up and dies now.

The last thing I wanted to think about was how soon our newly minted 16-year-old would be angling for wheels. Yet that very thought was

keeping me up at night. That and the brakes that seemed like soft, squishy cheese.

So I did what any semi-irrational, middle-aged motorist who's never-owned-a-new-car does in such cases: I cruised a local car dealer's website looking for a bargain.

Suddenly, a window popped up in the corner of my screen.

A prim little emoji with a smart page-boy haircut and operator's headset typed out a greeting each letter appearing separately and stitching themselves together as if by magic.

"H e l l o! We have hundreds of new and pre-owned cars to choose from. Take our personalize survey and let us help you find the ride of your life."

The last car I bought on my own was back in the days when car ads lined birdcages. Just before the internet and cell services gobbled up all of our attention and when cookies were the things you might track so as not to ruin an appetite.

Honestly, it looked like a trap.

But at that moment, I felt like a certain wolf, with courage enough

to chew off its own foot to save it from the trap of the wrong car. ...

I typed in my information:

I am looking for a pre-owned compact hatchback preferred with manual transmission. Must have advanced safety features and be fuel-efficient. 

= : ^ )

My anime operator's response: 

=8 ^ O

"You are looking for a unicorn."

Of course, she didn't use those words, but asking to add years to my timeframe struck terror into my heart.

It's strange how months of thinking about replacing a car can turn into a mad rush the second you click on a virtual showroom.

The mission had me.

The next thing I knew, I was making appointments to test drive possibilities and talking myself down from the ledge. 

"I'm going to take the weekend the think about it," I told myself and tag team member two, who got me in a hand-off from the emoji woman and had every intention of passing the baton to his team's "number cruncher."

You could almost hear the sound of failure as I sprinted out the floor-to-ceiling glass doors.

But I couldn't let it go. Two hundred thousand miles was just inches away.

The rattle and clang of my car just got louder the further I got from the showroom. The brakes seemed to get softer. Hmmm. ...That thumping sound is new. 

I can see another car dealership in the distance. I decided to stop. The sales team has all the same pitches, but they also had a unicorn.

Well, almost. This fairytale creature didn't have a hatchback and had only been around the block about 111 times, but it was a reasonable price, and it had safety features up the wazoo that came standard. 

When my husband called to check in and see about our progress, I told him the news.

"I bought a car. I pick it up Monday."

"That's great! How do you feel?"

"Right now, I feel relieved. But I'm sure I'll snap out of it."

Undressing like a Christmas tree

I felt like a jewel thief. Only some weird holiday version, who sidles up to a warm and cracking fire as the sleepy home's inhabitants nod off. The graceless kind, who tries to be silent as she pockets a sparkly bauble from old Tannenbaum's branches, but instead manages to knock over a tower of empty boxes before seizing a chunk of a glitter-strewn plaster mold of a thumbprint made to look like a reindeer. 

Luckily I am invisible.

Before anyone is the wiser, I have wrapped the ornament in a scrap of ancient tissue paper and stowed it in a box next to a blanket stitched letter "S."

But for all my stealthiness, I have no actual superpower. In fact, I am reasonably sure that the chore itself is what renders me unapparent.

If there is a woman on earth who has managed to delegate the work involved in the breaking down of Christmas, I have yet to make her acquaintance. 

 It's like any other household chore, except that the decorative conifer propped up in a festive plant stand and bedazzled with a slew of decorative knickknacks, and currently shedding its needles all over her living room floor, doesn't have any natural enemies beside yor' friendly neighborhood volunteer firefighter (who would also like to remind you to unplug the toaster oven when not in use).

It very well could stand there until summer, at which point it would be just a few handfuls of broken glass ornaments clinging to a nubbly tree skeleton and a few piles of curled up brown needles all over the floor. 

I miss my mother as I glance at the green fringed tablecloth that has served as our tree skirt for all of these years, appallingly apparent that its true purpose is as a de facto towel to soak up the spillage.

I think about her as I make my way around the tree, taking things off in groupings: first the flat things, and then the fluffy things, followed by the breakable things in waves of similar size. 

It's a method that makes it seem as if I have a three-dimensional map of their official positions in the storage containers permanently etched into my brain. When in truth, I wing it or fling it if I find the stuff doesn't fit. 

In one box is another box, filled with perfectly wrapped orbs that haven't been touched by human hands in at least three Christmases. If I pick one up, I can tell which I am holding from memory just by feeling its shape and weight.

The pink, sequined diamond - that was one of my favorites. The little elf man dancing in the hollow of a pin cushion egg, a very close second.

I barely remember my mother making these ornaments. She wasn't the crafty sort, but she turned out so

many of these intricate gems one year that the tip of her index finger bore a perfect divot where the pins pushed inward. 

She lamented how she sold all

the best ones - the ones made from our dresses and that had the

Most meaning to her - at the church craft fair. At the same time, chiding herself for letting herself get attached to "things."

These same "things" that have attached to me, and which, still in their wrappings, I haven't had the bravery to hang on my tree lest any one of them meets its demise as a dog's chew toy.

"Maybe next year," I think as I tuck that box away and slowly add the others. 

I can almost hear my mother's laughter as my kids make one last lap of the kitchen - grabbing a last handful of cereal for their nightly hibernation - when they finally notice

my work in the next room. 

"Hey! You undressed the tree."

A new year

I felt foggy. 

I wasn't sure what I was looking at, but the resolutions I had been tossing around in my head made me ready to stop gawking at the world through this tiny screen.

I wasn't going to pick it up.

In the first light of the new year, my twenty-twenty vision felt more like twenty-fifty.

Things swam in and out of my eyesight as if I had woken up underwater.

Honestly, I wasn't hungover.

Not in the traditional sense anyway.

But this feeling was slightly new.

For the first time, in more than a decade, my family had momentarily parted ways as the networks counted down the hours toward a new beginning.

Two of us - the elders - ventured out into the night, bearing desserts and the willingness to let the cards fall where they may ... usually on a large and generous table as happy party goers engage in some profane ad-lib.

The other two – the youngsters - stayed home with a single TV to fight over (who will get Netflix and who will have to give up Xbox) and a smorgasbord of TV dinners to choose from (and overheat).

Somehow, none of us seemed happy about this new end-of-year independence.

Certainly not the teen who had turned down what turned out to be her only invitation. In her estimation, it didn't count because she had fished for it. Of course, she had to throw it back.

There are so many things I could have told her. So many pearls of wisdom to let loose from their string.

But I know If I tried they'd just scatter all over the floor, tripping me up in the midst of my own awkward lecture series.

I stayed quiet, but offered my husband, who has trouble comprehending a world in which any problems remain internationally unsolved, the best advice I could give anyway: "sometimes a person just needs to wallow in her sadness."

It seems wrong, I know.

It's counter-intuitive and self-defeating. And yet to know what I'm getting at you just have to ask yourself: how many solutions turn out to be explosive messes when added to something caustic?

Arguing this point may be the emotional equivalent of bleach meeting ammonia.

Of course, the other parents didn't have it easier than we did. Our kids may have stayed home with their Apples To Apples and their disappointment, but their kids were driving around with their newish licenses into the adult world, heading to other kids' parties. Their parents were tracking their every move with Find My Phone.

I'm not sure I'm ready for this new normal, even if it is just an exaggeration of the old normal, which includes a liberal dose of worry that lives permanently in the pit of my stomach.

Humor helps. Laughing helps. Getting home in time to watch as the Pope loses his cool with The Faithful even restores my faith in humanity.

Because the old normal still rings true. Our party doesn't end until we are home safely with our kids, and we turn on the station that always drops the ball.

Just like us.