Snacks

Both pantry doors are opened wide and my son, Eric, studies the contents. He sighs. He closes the pantry, opens the refrigerator and stares inside for a while before sighing again and closing the fridge. He reopens the pantry, as if something new has miraculously appeared in the three minutes since he last looked. The question will come next.

“What do we have to eat?” Eric asks me.

“Chips?” I say.

He shakes his head.

“Cheese? Crackers?”

“Nah,” he says. With a shrug he goes upstairs to his room without a snack.

Fifteen minutes later his brother, Greg, does the same thing: the pantry, the fridge, the pantry, the question. I offer suggestions that get rejected.

“There’s nothing good to eat,” he says. “I’m going over to Mark’s house.”

I never have the right snack in the house. If they want chips and salsa, I have cheese and crackers. If they want cookies, I have chips and salsa, since I stocked up from when they wanted those before. I buy potato chips and they want peanuts. I buy peanuts. They want Cheetos. I buy Cheetos. They want Wheat Thins. I buy Wheat Thins and they crave apples, but I’ve thrown out the apples that rotted in the fruit bin from the last time they asked for them.

You’d think by now the pantry and fridge would be so full of stuff they used to want, that sooner or later I’d hit the jackpot and everything they could possibly want would be ready and waiting. But no, I always come up short in the snack department.

I find myself wondering what Mark’s mom has in her pantry, and I decide to call her.

“So Kathy, “ I say, coming right out with it, “What kind of snacks do you have for the kids after school?”

“Nothing they ever want,” she says with a tone of exasperation I’m familiar with.

“Well, what are they eating right now?” I ask, desperate to know what perfect snack my son has found there.

“Oh,” she says. “The two of them stared into the pantry for ten minutes. Then they did the same thing with the fridge. Pretty soon Mark said they were going over to Jimmy’s house and off they went. I don’t think they ever ate anything.”

Still obsessed, I call Jimmy’s house and ask Mary what the kids are eating.

“Nothing,” Mary says. “I think all three of them are on their way to your house.”

I swell with pride. For once I must have the best snacks! I can’t wait to see what they’ll eat.

Meanwhile, Eric is back at the pantry, and I’m feeling more confident now. Bring on “the question”. But before he can ask it, Greg and his buddies swoop into the kitchen, grab Eric, and in a flash the four kids are outside playing street hockey. What about snacks? Don’t they want my snacks?

Deflated, I start to think about fixing dinner. I open the fridge and stare inside. I check the freezer. I open both pantry doors, searching for options.

The kids are right. There’s nothing good to eat in this house.

Copyright Liz Zuercher 2009