'Social distancing took the meal plan from the realm of 'personal life hack' into 'disaster preparedness.'' lydiakiesling writes
Photo: Getty Images/YinYang Closer to the pandemic’s beginning, people joked about a spate of social-distancing babies born in nine months. This was a hopeful note to strike, but I could not relate. These days the only thing that makes me amorous, mostly for myself, is looking at my meal plan.
It has been just over a year since the trip to the art-supply store. We now live somewhere else, and I no longer have as many events to keep track of, and when there was day care — it’s been 26 days but feels longer — my husband and I had standing assignments for drop-off and pickup. My role as the designated flexible parent has been cemented. The foam board lies abandoned in the basement.
A disclaimer, perhaps obvious but also necessary: Currently, we are all healthy. Having work that is so sporadic it can’t sustain a family means it is easy for me to continue along as I was, at home, pecking haphazardly at a computer. My husband, for now, is still employed, and is able to work from home. He earns regular money that is tied to our health insurance and allows us to buy groceries.
But when I trace my finger across the written-out meal plan, when I look at the ingredients lined up in the fridge like a crocodile surveying her eggs, when I adjust to suit the bare shelves in the grocery store, when I spend 40 minutes cooking something instead of looking at my phone, I feel myself being the person my children need me to be. I find intense satisfaction at having everyone sit down at the table with something edible before them.
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