I looked at the three items in our cart.
Under normal circumstances, seven minutes.
Under current conditions, impossible to predict.
I handed over the emergency snack I had packed before leaving home.
That was another thing children changed.
Before them, I had never carried food in anticipation of someone becoming unable to survive the distance between a parking lot and a kitchen.
Now snacks were infrastructure.
We got the bananas.
Three things.
That was all.
Then we passed a display near checkout.
“Can I have this?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“I’ll be good.”
“You are already supposed to be good.”
The child considered this deeply, as though I had introduced a complicated new legal theory.
At the register, one child dropped a snack wrapper.
The other needed a drink.
Then they disagreed over who would help put the groceries on the conveyor belt.
There were three groceries.
Somehow there was still conflict.
The cashier waited politely while I separated the bread from two hands pulling it in opposite directions.
I paid.
We returned to the car.
Milk, bread, bananas.
Success.
Total elapsed time: almost an hour.
I laughed when I saw the clock.
Not because anything was particularly funny.
Sometimes parents laugh because the alternative would require paperwork.
Back home, I put the groceries away and immediately started dinner.
That was the cruel rhythm of family life.
Completing one complicated task rarely earned rest.
It simply unlocked the next complicated task.
I chopped vegetables while answering questions.
“Where’s my blue shirt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find it?”
“I’m cooking.”
“After?”
“Maybe.”
Thirty seconds later:
“Can I have a snack?”
“I’m making dinner.”
“But dinner isn’t ready.”
“That is the exact problem I am currently solving.”
A few minutes later someone needed help opening something.
Then someone could not find a pencil.
Then someone accused someone else of touching something that apparently had sacred boundaries.
I moved between the stove and the table like an underpaid stage manager trying to keep a production from collapsing.
Finally, dinner was ready.
I put the plates down.
One child looked at the food.
The face changed instantly.
