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Feb. 21, 2024

Day #2 of solo parenting:

Photo by Eric Coble

We decided to try a new recipe for a low-fat, low-sugar vegetarian lasagna. It was clearly an experiment and Lightning Bug kept reminding me “We might not like it”. I agreed. “But we might like it,” she would add hopefully.  

So this Schrödinger’s Lasagna was coming to messy fruition, and Carol calls on a break and we answer and Bug – who has been asking pretty much hourly where Mama is or when she is coming back – really wants to hear Carol’s voice. The grown-ups catch up on daily stuff, Lightning Bug sitting very quietly, very intently. I ask Bug if we’re done with the call and she says, barely holding it together, “Yeah.”  We hang up and she just melts down.

The almost-but-not presence of her mom is too much. She is crying and crying, we serve up the lasagna (one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen (so no full photos here), she is crying too much to eat it on her own, so I pull her chair over next to mine and feed her, taking bites myself when I can.  

And we sit there quietly eating between sobs.  

And she says, “It’s not bad.”  

And she’s right. 

It’s not.