Author: Rebecca Cuneo Keenan

DAILY SNACK

I can’t blog because I’m off to see a newborn baby.
A baby that is less than three days old.
This baby will be so fresh and new,
And quiet and cuddly,
And fragile,
And demand such love.
You know, the kind of baby that makes a part of you,
Scream out from within,
“I want one!”
But maybe this will be better.
This visiting and oohing and awing.
Lending whatever breastfeeding expertise I can.
And then returning home with my own two children.
The ones who sleep through the night,
Thank you very much.

DAILY SNACK

I woke up yesterday morning with laundry rage.
It had been building for a while.
I’d only done the occasional load,
And then had to go down and rummage through the dryer every morning.
Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.
This morning, though, I could not find any underwear,
Clean or dirty!
And a certain someone who shall remain nameless wet the bed for the first time in months and months.
Thus began the rage.
How the hell could my husband insist on sleeping in,
When there was so much laundry to do.
I needed these kids out of here because it was going to be me versus the piles of clothes,
And it wasn’t going to be pretty.
A couple hours into my mission,
I pulled out the lint trap to clean it,
And a toy drumstick kind of thing,
That was lying on the dryer,
Somehow rolled toward the hole where the lint trap goes,
And was exactly the right size to fall right in.
Did you know that there is no bottom to that hole?
The toy is deep, deep within the bowels of my dryer never to be retrieved.
I’m not sure what this means for the future of my dryer,
But I still had twenty-zillion loads of laundry to do.
So maybe we’ll find out.

DAILY SNACK

We were chatting in the kitchen,
Tara and I,
When some sputtering and coughing caught my attention.
“Irene?”
There she was in the next room,
Standing next to my laptop,
With the last couple cold ounces of my take-out coffee.
Milk, no sugar.
Her head was tilted back and she was gulping it back as fast as she could.
I took it away,
Of course,
And scolded her and reminded her that coffee is not for toddlers.
But then again,
She did miss her nap,
So I do appreciate the impulse.

DAILY SNACK

It’s not that I dislike cooking.
In fact, I’ve been known to have half-decent results.
It’s the wielding of sharp knives and hot stoves,
While trying to fend off shrieking toddlers and avoid slipping on the trail of hot wheels winding their way across the kitchen floor.
It’s the tears and the tantrums and the ever-more-urgent need to get dinner on the table NOW.
It’s doing all that and needing it to be wholesome and nutritious and preferably from scratch.
Because you wouldn’t dare give your child anything prepared.
Heaven forbid.
And then it’s the dishes.
The dishes and the pots and pans and spoons and cups and little tiny snack bowls and the tupperware drawer that’s been emptied all over the floor.
Again.
And THEN, today,
It’s the sugar bowl that was upended and somehow wound up spewing sugar over every surface of my pantry.
Every surface.
So thanks for the tips Food Network and assorted food blogs and magazines,
But the cooking is the easy part.

DAILY SNACK

The three of them were squatting in the dirt.

A half-filled gardening spade lay between them,

And they made a circle around it.

“See, you can touch it and it won’t hurt you,” said the biggest one.

He poked at a beetle-like bug that was trapped in the spade.

“Go ahead, Irene, touch it.”

“Yeah Irene, touch it! It won’t hurt you,” her brother chimed in.

Her little flaxen head bobbed up down above the bug,

But her hands did not move.

The chorus of “Touch it! Touch it!” grew louder and more insistent.

Until they took her little hands and tried to make her touch it.

Until I intervened.

DAILY SNACK

If you can get to the Toronto Islands,

On a not-too-hot Friday evening in June,

And ride the ferry back to the city at sunset,

Sitting at the very front of the boat with small children,

To watch the city greet you,

You should.

You won’t need pictures with memories like that.