The Life-Changing Magic of Eating Alone
Except when it’s harder than you expected it to be.
When my kids started spending a few nights a week at their dad’s house last summer, I had a lot of feelings about a lot of things, but I had absolutely zero concerns about what I would eat for dinner.
This is because I did the majority of the food labor in our relationship and in our family life. Just about every single day for roughly 20 years, I thought, “what are we having for dinner?” knowing that I was the person most responsible for answering that question. Even when the answer was “he’ll pick up takeout,” (and let’s be real, the answer was often takeout), I was the person articulating that answer and assigning the task because I had already cooked most of the week and no longer had it in me to make both decisions and food.
And for the past decade of raising kids, the answer could never, ever be as simple as “he’ll pick up takeout,” because while that was happening, somebody else needed to be breastfed, tubefed, or bottle fed, or later, to have an entirely separate meal prepared because they didn’t like anything at the place we wanted to order takeout from. And sure, all they wanted was some Eggo waffles or a frozen burrito and maybe some strawberries. But someone still had to make those decisions, and then toast, microwave, and slice. In my brain, “dinner” is inextricably linked with “other people’s needs.” So the prospect of making and eating dinner for me and me alone was exhilarating.
Until I started doing it.