Honestly, right now, it feels more like summer than anything. My mom, an educational coach at the local elementary school, still has to be online and available at her regular time frame. My dad, retired and absolutely restless, still mows at the golf course three days a week just to get out of the house and not go absolutely insane. My Nana (Dad’s mom) lives with us, but mostly keeps to herself. I wake up too late to eat lunch like a person and instead just kind of snack until either my mother declares it a “Fend For Yourself Night” or smacks frozen meat onto a plate on the counter to thaw. Fend for Yourself is a double-edged sword. On one hand, I don’t have to eat the Chicken Fried Steak my dad loves and the rest of us merely tolerate. On the other hand, there’s like a 60% chance that I’ll be eating either rice or plain spaghetti for dinner, which isn’t great when it’s your only meal of the day.
Honestly, we’ve been fortunate. Nothing much has changed in our daily routine, except the three Zoom calls I have a week and the sporadic computer problems my mother faces (recently we covered copying and pasting, don’t laugh, she’s trying her best.) For some ungodly reason, my parents bought an entire half a cow’s worth of meat from a local butcher earlier in the winter, so at the very least, we’re good on that.
We do a lot of snacking throughout the day, or at least me and my dad do. Saltines, Goldfish, chips, nothing is safe. I’ve been on a garlic toast kick lately, which isn’t ideal, but what can you do? My mom is less of a disaster so she just drinks an entire pot of coffee every day.
Last night, we had a roast. I don’t know what kind of roast, because I’m a little gremlin and I don’t really like beef. We don’t get too adventurous with food, my dad and I are both, unfortunately, kind of picky eaters. My father, who once touched a hot burner with his bare palm because he didn’t wait for me to tell him that the red light means its hot, doesn’t even attempt to help with dinner, which is probably for the best. He sits in the living room, watching TV that nobody else cares about (If I have to watch one more semi-quirky white couple redecorate a room with shiplap I am going to come unglued). My mom moves around the kitchen about fifteen times in as many minutes. I ping around, mostly trying and succeeding to stay out of her way, trying to come up with a story or anecdote I haven’t shared yet (it’s getting difficult) and setting the table. That too depends on what we’re eating, for example, we had some corn on the cob with our meal, so my dad needed his fake butter.
My Nana will appear, without fail, about four or five minutes before dinner is done. I don’t know how she does it, but it’s impressive. She’ll kind of just hover in the dining room by her chair until it’s actually time to eat.
The meal itself is uneventful, usually beef of some variety, typically with mashed potatoes and gravy as a side. Something very 1950’s sitcom America. My Nana will recount either something she saw on Facebook recently, a plotline or character from a reality TV show none of the rest of us watch, or share a story she’s almost definitely told before (we try not to hold it against her, she is 86 after all.) Then dinner ends, Dad cleans up only his place and abandons the rest to us. My Nana will help us for a while until she too retreats, and I’ll help my mom clear the table at least. Then Mom scrubs some pans and we chatter inanely about whatever’s going on (If I’m being completely honest, it’s mostly just me kvetching about classes). Then dinner is over, until my dad is hungry again in a few hours and will just eat pretzels out of the loudest bag on the face of the earth.
Will Write for Food 