the chickpea incident

On Sunday, Christopher and I went to visit my friend who has a son Christopher's age, one of the few people on earth who can give Christopher a run for his money in the talking department. The plan was to go in the afternoon and come back in time for dinner, so we could have a relatively normal bedtime routine before school on Monday. I'd left Dan with the kids on Saturday night, and felt a bit bad about making him cook two nights in a row, so before we left I roasted some vegetables and gave him dinner instructions.

Open a can of chickpeas and throw them in with the vegetables, I said.
Put some rice in the rice cooker, I said.
Take out a box of Golden Curry and make the sauce, but don't mix it in with the veggies because then Caroline won't touch any of it, I said.
Should I add onions to the sauce? he asked. Oh sure, that's a good idea, I said.
I'm not putting potatoes into this veg mix because I feel like the rice and the chickpeas are enough starch, I said.

So we got home and dinner was on the table. The vegetables I'd roasted, mostly warmed up. Rice in the rice cooker. And curry sauce with chickpeas and potatoes in it.

WHY??????

I KNOW I should be grateful that I have a husband who is capable of getting that far. Goodness knows my father could never have managed even that much, and I have female friends whose husbands are equally domestically useless.

But WHY????????

It was just...the chickpea that broke Susannah's back. I completely lost it and screamed. A lot.

Yes my daughter is a ridiculously picky eater, but she's also a growing kid and I need to get all the halfway-nutritious foods down her that I can. I think it's important for kids - for girls especially - to be in control of their own bodies. It's my job to cook nutritious food, as best I can; it's her job to decide what to eat. And when I can adjust the meal, especially with no extra effort at all, so that she can eat some of it, I'm going to do it. I'm trying to cut down on the amount of meat we eat; the chickpeas were supposed to pass for a protein. And he effectively took that off her menu.

He thinks she should just eat what's put in front of her.

He thinks that I'm too permissive and that our kids are uncultured heathens who really just need more discipline in their lives.

I think if he thinks he can do better he can very well quit his fucking well-paid job with free food, and come try mine for a while. See how it feels to take on most of the housework, most of the cooking, and the entire emotional burden of four people - for no money, no retirement savings, and career prospects of "ooh if you work really hard on the language front you might someday be able to teach Sunday School to obnoxious Swiss kids."

Screaming doesn't help. I scream, he just sits there and stares back at me like a recalcitrant teenager.

Why did you do that?
     I thought the sauce needed some fat in it.
The curry cubes ARE fat, why would they need more?
     I just thought there had to be something in the sauce.
It's a SAUCE. And anyway why did you put the potatoes in when I explicitly said I was leaving them out?
     I like potatoes in my curry.
Fucking hell Dan, do you know why I cooked the vegetables ahead of time? Because I wanted to save you the work, but also because I can't trust you to do it. You would undoubtedly have "forgotten" to put in the fennel.
    Yeah probably, I don't really like fennel.

Fuck. I'm not a huge fan of fennel either. But it came in the vegetable box, which gets delivered to our doorstep every week so that I have to come up with things to cook and don't feed the family hot dogs and cereal every night. He benefits from this arrangement. But does that mean he has to participate in it? Apparently not.

And does he have any better ideas? Of course not. As soon as I stop screaming our argument will float out of his head like a fluffy cloud on a sunny day. The man is a born fucking Buddhist.

Communicate better, the experts say. But you can't communicate when only one party is willing to engage. And we've been through *that* argument so. many. times.

I thought the compromise we'd come to is okay, I won't attempt to talk these things through with you any more, and I won't expect you to think through them for yourself, but when I ask you to do something you'll do it.

Except time and again he does some, but not all, of "it."

Because I'm too bossy? His precious male ego is bothered by the concept of taking direction? He is incapable of communicating his opinions using words, so he shows me with his actions that he doesn't agree with my approach?

Who knows? It doesn't matter. Once again I am the one screaming (screaming at your spouse causes irreparable damage to your kids, the experts say) and the kids have long ago left the table and I think maybe Caroline ate four chunks of carrot and three helpings of white rice for dinner and it is all my fault.

Once again, I KNOW I should be more grateful. Daniel has many good qualities. We are very lucky. No relationship is perfect. And it doesn't do me any good to bang my head against the wall of how-things-should-be.

But sometimes I do it anyway.