Written by Kira Coleman
When Laura was too angry to speak, she put it into work: into the new curtains for the family room or the vegetable garden or the spaghetti. Tonight it was the spaghetti. She could barely believe the nerve of Sister Carver, pulling her aside after enrichment like she knew a dang thing about Laura’s home, or her marriage, or what she did and did not have time for.
“Mom, what are you making for dinner?” asked Zedekiah, Laura’s six-year-old who had just slithered into the kitchen belly-down on a skateboard.
“Food,” she said, pulling the plastic off the hamburger meat with a little more force than was strictly necessary and dumping it into the stock pot to mix with the onions and garlic. “How many times have I told you that skateboards are outside toys?”
“Uhh…probably like never,” he said, zooming over to head butt Laura’s ankles right as she was lifting the wooden spoon to break up the hamburger.
Sometimes she wished that her kids would see the spoon as a threat, the way she’d seen her mother’s spoon, and mind her right away like she had. Maybe Sister Carver had a point: Laura apparently hadn’t even made time to nurture or teach her children.
“Please, just go outside, Zeddy,” she said, a single tear escaping as she picked up a can of whole tomatoes.
“Are you crying, Mommy?”
“It’s from the onions, baby,” she said, and he scampered out through the sliding glass door, blissfully unaware of the process of cutting and cooking an onion.
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Kira Coleman is trying her best to make some sense of this world that is always spinning. She finds that writing helps. Other things that help include reading, knitting, playing outside with her dog, and actually doing the dishes.