They are looking at me with their sad eyes and their upturned faces and even though they are not saying a word I know what it is they want. It’s what they always want, every day, morning noon and night. It’s what haunts my dreams and occupies almost every waking thought. It’s what I spend most of my time on, where all my energy goes. The bane of my existence.
They want dinner. They want it now. They are not shy about letting me know that they have needs and that I am letting them down — no, I am consigning them to a life of suffering — if I do not give them what they crave, and do so immediately.
It would be easy, or at least easier, if their demands were easily articulated, if they remained the same from one day to another, but this is not the case. Whatever they want is what I was not prepared to give them. Game hens, festooned with garnet yams? No. They wanted tenderloin of beef. Butterflied shrimp? No, not in a million years; they want roast lamb, roast rack of lamb to be specific.
I prepare pasta, hand-made pasta, made with the finest semolina and the freshest of eggs, and they sniff with their noses pointed in the air and make those faces of disgust. Pasta! Who, other than a churlish lout, would prepare pasta when clearly the occasion called for potatoes, potatoes with cheese.
I have thought, many times, of giving up, of surrendering my duties to any one of them, of taking a back seat and dishing out the criticism instead of taking it, but my tastes are too particular. I know what they would prepare: peanut butter with marshmallow fluff, peanut butter on celery, peanut butter with pickles. This is not to say that they would ever request peanut butter from me, nor to say that if I ever served them peanut butter it would be met with approval. No, quite the contrary. If I deigned to serve them peanut butter there would be a general revolt, a riot of the first magnitude.
And so I labor on, plotting and planning. I am, at the moment, formulating the evening meal, taking stock of the ingredients, and crafting a dish that makes the best of what we have.
Dinner is not ready; dinner is pending.
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