When Kids Take Over the Kitchen
Writing in the Washington Examiner, Meghan Cox Gurdon gets a late Mother’s Day surprise when her children decide to cook her dinner. Will it be a delicious feast or a disaster?
Some holidays have a longer comet trail than others. Christmas, for instance: Weeks afterward, people padding around in their stocking feet may get stabbed by a dried needle of yuletide fir. Halloween's gluttony is followed by days in which hollow-eyed children insist they didn't eat candy from their stash before dinner -- and that's not chocolate on their cheeks, honest it isn't.
Mother's Day typically lasts no longer than the 24 hours allotted on the calendar. A family may knock itself out for a few hours -- bringing coffee in bed, making cards, maybe taking mother out for brunch -- but by the next morning the event is safely in the rearview mirror and people are asking her again, "What's for dinner?"
So imagine the surprise of a woman who approached her kitchen the next day with the intention of answering that question, only to be fended off by a panicked cry.
"Don't come into the kitchen!" a young voice yelled. "Don't look!"
"But I need to start dinner," the woman called from the next room.
"No! I am making dinner! It's a late Mother's Day surprise!" cried the voice. "Actually, it is a feast!"
There was a pause as the mother considered this fork, as it were, in the road. Down one tine, to extend the metaphor, was the practical imperative of preparing a proper meal for a houseful of people. Down the other tine was impracticality and whimsy, a letting go of the custom so as to accommodate a motivated junior chef. Logic and custom argued for Option A but as is often the case with the happiest moments in family life, the woman surprised herself and chose impractical Option B. …
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