Day 14
The Thai place knows my order.
The Thai place asks if I want my “usual.”
The Thai place asked tonight if everything was okay at home.
It is Day 14. Two consecutive weeks. The kitchen has been used twice in fourteen days, both times to boil water for pasta that nobody finished because we left for a 6:30 PM practice at 5:55 PM and ate the rest cold out of Tupperware in the parking lot at the indoor facility.
I am not exaggerating. I wish I were exaggerating.
There is a graveyard of pizza boxes on top of the recycling bin in the garage. Not in the bin. On top of it. Because the bin filled up on Day 6 and nobody has taken it to the curb because trash day is Tuesday and we have not been home on a Tuesday night in three weeks.
There is a Chick-fil-A bag in the back seat of the car from a tournament weekend that I cannot identify by location. It could be from any of the last four. The receipt is crumpled into the cup holder. I am afraid to look at the date.
You start to identify yourself by your delivery apps.
DoorDash for the practice nights — fast, late, doesn’t judge you for ordering at 8:47 PM.
Uber Eats for the weekends — better restaurant selection, the kid likes the tracking map.
Grubhub for the one place you actually like that nobody else delivers, where the driver is always the same guy in a Toyota Camry who waves at you through the door now.
The fridge has three things in it: condiments, an apple that is now a science experiment, and a container of leftover pasta from the one time you cooked, which has been in there long enough that nobody is going to be the one to open it and find out.
You buy groceries every Sunday. You throw them out every Saturday. You do this because some part of you still believes you are a person who cooks.
You are not a person who cooks. Not right now. Not this season. Maybe not until June.
The shame is specific. It is not abstract.
It is the moment you order from the Thai place for the fourth time in a week and you pause on the checkout screen and consider, briefly, lying about your name. Picking up under “Mike.”
It is the moment your kid says “I want chicken nuggets” and you respond “Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, or Raising Cane’s” without thinking, like it is a normal multiple choice question that a parent should be ready to answer at 5:14 PM on a Wednesday.
It is the moment you realize your seven-year-old can read the Domino’s tracker.
There is a fantasy you keep having. In the fantasy, the season ends. You go to the grocery store on a Sunday morning. You buy real ingredients. You make a roast chicken. You sit at the table. You use plates. You drink water out of an actual glass instead of a plastic Gatorade bottle that has rolled around the floor of the SUV for nine days.
In the fantasy, the kitchen smells like food again.
You do not know when the fantasy will become real. You suspect August. You suspect not August.
It is Day 14.
Tomorrow is a tournament.
I just looked up the closest restaurant to the field.
— Tournament Parent