Flat Broke with Two Goats

by Jennifer McGaha

I would do anything for those few moments a day, for that hour or half hour at the dinner table with my family, so I cooked with a sort of primal ferocity, as if the safety and sanctity of my family depended on it.

“Must be highly organized. Must be a self-starter. Must be detail oriented.” They might as well have said, “Must not be, nor ever have been, nor ever aspire to be, an English teacher or a writer.”

I missed hearing those voices I grew up with—the thick, unhurried speech of my people.

So over the next few days, we backed up and did what we should have done to begin with, which seemed to be our modus operandi: Proceed at breakneck pace until a problem occurs, then furiously backpedal.

•2 teaspoons ground paprika

I realized that if someone told me right then that I could go back ten years, have my old life back exactly as it was, a life where I never saw my husband, where our lives were always about becoming instead of being, I would have refused.

Though I adored my kids, I was often exhausted, mentally understimulated, emotionally spent, overwhelmed by my own offspring. Who are these alien creatures? Why do they keep following me around asking for food and water, expecting me to open their juice boxes and the tops of their squeezable yogurts? I sometimes wondered. And where on earth is the grown-up who is supposed to be taking care of them?