Skating Thin Ice
Unsalvageable Chicken, Mothering, and A Stand-Up Comedy Sketch
It was a Tuesday. Tuesday is ice skating night. I put three chicken breasts in the Dutch oven around 2. With broth and taco seasoning for nachos. I waived the tedium of setting a timer in favor of radical self-trust.
At 4, drawn to attention by the faint scent of char, I wrapped a potholder around the knob to find roughly one third of the original contents fixed to the bottom of the pot in an unjubilous layer of blackened crust.
Disheartened but determined not to show it, I forked the salvageable bits in falsetto cheer. My tracker children, nostrils flaring, drawn to attention by the scent. All of us, catching whiffs of things we don’t want.
I dance around the kitchen, still faking it, placing small spoonfuls of rice into each tostito scoop. Pressing shreds of edible chicken on top. Heating queso in the microwave. A sort of tenderization Hail Mary. I pour lacrois over ice into light blue sea glass cups, signaling that this was a special meal.
India, 11, humors me. Isla, however, takes two bites before refusing to actively participate in the conspiracy. “I don’t want to eat this,” she says. I sigh. “Well, I’m not making anything else.”
I can feel the pins and needles begin to undulate beneath my skull. Tiny non-healing needles of irritation that accompany our pre-period week. Now that India and I are on the same schedule, no one in our tiny two-bedroom is safe inside this window.
The usual reserve of patience sucked dry, there are more snide remarks, less don’t sweat the small stuff, it’s all small stuff. It sometimes feels like we are combing conversation for battles just to distract ourselves from an interior edginess we can’t do much to pacify.
Somewhere between clearing the mostly full plates from the table and deciding who gets to use the softer softball mitt, a screaming match breaks out in front of the jack and jill mirror. Someone’s hair was tousled, who didn’t care for it. By the time I finish scraping failure into the bin and walk 20 paces to the site of the incident, India’s saucer eyes are welling with tears. I hold her close. “It’s ok to cry,” I say. “I’m sorry. This week is always hard, huh?” It was a rhetorical question. We both know the answer.
Isla comes back in for an encore, guns blazing. Wildly unsympathetic to our bad-tempered carryings-on. In her mind, we are choosing this. In some ways, she’s probably right. All she knows is that for a week, we are insufferable. That she, the only sane one, is forced into a managerial position. Tough love being her disciplinary bent. None of it is fair.
After Indi settles, I move on to Isla. She’s standing in front of the altar. A palo santo stick in one hand. The rattle I brought back from Peru in the other. Earlier that week, we decided the rattle should be of the mood-boosting variety. We started the ritual of shaking it over whoever was in a bad mood. If nothing else, dancing around rattling the rattle, chanting, happy rattle happy rattle one two three might induce a stubborn smile on the recipient. Which, so far, it had.
She saw me coming and slid the rattle into its designated holster. Indicating the approach of a lost cause.
I lit the stick for her and placed it in the gold burner cup to smoke. Sending a silent prayer up to the Spirits - if they couldn’t salvage my chicken, could they at least be summoned to salvage my mothering?
Isla’s head slung low as she moved to the couch. Placing her back against a round chartreuse pillow and crossing her arms against everything.
“I don’t like Periods. I don’t like Hermones. And I don’t like Kumon,” she declares.
*Kumon is a math and reading tutoring program they have to do every day
“I don’t even use periods at the end of my sentences anymore.”
It took everything I had to train the cackle threatening to escape through my nose. Had she come up with this herself?
Without skipping a beat, she continued. “
“I HATE hermones. And you two having them makes ME have them. And it’s not fair. ‘Cause I don’t even want them.”
At this point, unable to suppress cacophonous giggles, I employed an index finger to excuse myself. Grabbing the phone from the kitchen counter to plug this gem into Isla’s Notes. Given my failed execution of radical self-trust earlier, I am taking zero chances of forgetting what would be the opening line to an imminent stand-up routine.
In a way I least expected, and with no small measure of invisible help, we managed to turn the evening around. It wasn’t perfect, but it was our flavor. And despite a forgettable dinner, our bellies were full on the way to the rink that night.
