Instead, I stood in the foyer with a cheesecake, three children coated in flour to varying degrees, one fewer nanny than I’d had fifteen minutes earlier, and a headache attempting to colonize my skull.
“Pizza?” I asked.
Billie gasped and clapped her hands. “Yes.”
CJ perked up. “Actually, could we do sushi?”
Bianca lifted a finger. “Chinese would be better. I’ve been thinking about scallion pancakes since lunch.”
A reasonable parent would have said, “No, we are only ordering from one restaurant for dinner.”
A reasonable parent would have reminded them that the house was not a food court.
A reasonable parent would have taken charge.
Me? I said, “Okay.”
CJ brightened. “Okay to which?”
“All of it.”
Bianca studied me with concern, as if she were witnessing a structural collapse in real time. “You’re ordering from three restaurants?”
“It’s Friday.”
She squinted. “Sorry, Dad, but I don’t think that’s a realistic argument.”
“It’s the only one I have, Bianca.”
Billie released my leg and punched both arms into the air. “Food party!”
Happiness. Immediate, uncomplicated happiness.
CJ jogged toward the family room, which was really just an open-plan den area by the kitchen, to find the stack of takeout menus, even though we could have found every menu online. Bianca followed him, talking about dumpling ratios while Billie twirled and left pale flour footprints across the dark hardwood.
When the pizza arrived, Billie tried to convince the delivery driver she had personally invented cheese. Sushi followed sevenminutes later, and CJ thanked the driver with such polished sincerity that the man walked away looking like he felt better about humanity. The Chinese food arrived last, delivered by a woman who took one look at Billie’s flour-covered face and said, “Baking night?”
By the time everything was spread across the kitchen island, the house smelled incredible.
We ate on the floor of the family room because the dining table was covered in an extremely thick mixture of egg and flour that had formed into a cement-like texture. So, to comfort myself, I decided that floor dinner was a whimsical memory they would cherish.
I leaned back against the couch with a plate balanced on my knees and watched my children. CJ, sitting cross-legged beside the sushi and arranging the pieces with the concentration of a tiny food critic. Bianca, who had claimed the scallion pancakes and dumplings, though she kept reaching over to steal edamame from CJ’s tray. And Billie, who had a slice of pizza in each hand and sauce smeared over her chin.
They were happy. That was all that mattered.
CJ laughed when Billie attempted to fold a pizza slice around a California roll.
“Billie, that is a culinary crime,” Bianca said.
Billie stuck her tongue out. “I’m expanding the laws of dinner.”
Sometimes, my five-year-old’s vocabulary surprised me.
I tried to hide my smile as CJ launched into a story about a renegade chef who smuggled forbidden cheese across international borders. No one knew what he was talking about,but he assured us he’d seen a YouTube video, so it was legit. Bianca interrupted three times to question the plausibility of the story.
I should have stopped the pizza-sushi combination.
I should have gotten napkins sooner.
