I had this moment yesterday that will live in my head rent-free until I’m ninety and drooling in a nursing home. I was standing at the kitchen island chopping vegetables like the wholesome mother I pretend to be on the internet, when my eight-year-old walked in, looked me dead in the eye, and said: “Mom, can you make me a snack that’s not a snack you have to make?” I paused. Knife mid-air. Carrot dangling like it, too, was exhausted by this question.Translation: “Can you produce food from your body using only the power of your despair and whatever is currently within arm’s reach, preferably without moving more than three feet or showing signs that you are a separate human being with needs?” I handed her a banana. She stared at it like I’d just offered her a live eel. “This requires peeling. ”Yes, dear. Yes it does. Welcome to my villain origin story. Here’s the thing: my children genuinely believe I am a 24-hour convenience store with legs. I have birthed three tiny humans who are convinced that the second they experience a feeling (hunger, boredom, the existential dread of third grade), I should immediately manifest a solution in the form of pre-cut fruit, string cheese, or those little pouches that cost $47 each and taste like lies.They don’t even say “please” anymore. It’s just: “Mom.”
(pause for dramatic effect)
“I require sustenance.” Yesterday my eight-year-old opened the fridge, sighed like a 47-year-old accountant doing taxes, and announced, “There’s nothing to eat in this house.” While staring directly at seventeen containers of leftovers, a full carton of strawberries, and an entire rotisserie chicken I considered proposing to after the week I’ve had. I have become the Roomba of snacks. I just roam the house vacuuming up their complaints and dispensing Goldfish crackers like I’m being paid in exposure. And honestly? I thought this would bother me more. I thought I’d be over here writing think-pieces about raising entitled gremlins.But yesterday, after the banana incident, I watched my little darling sit on the couch, legs swinging, happily eating her stupid peeled banana while narrating his Minecraft build to absolutely no one, and something in me just… softened. Because yeah, I’m a vending machine. But I’m their vending machine. And one day (probably sooner than I want), they won’t need me to peel anything anymore. They’ll grab their own bananas. They’ll make their own snacks. They’ll roll their eyes when I offer to cut grapes in half “just in case.” One day the house will be quiet and the fridge will stay full and I’ll walk past the kitchen island at 3:17 p.m. on a random Tuesday and realize nobody has asked me for anything in six hours. And I will probably cry into a bag of their leftover Goldfish like a complete psychopath. So yeah. For now, I’ll keep being the snack mama. I’ll keep buying the overpriced pouches and pretending I don’t know where the good chocolate is hidden (top shelf, behind the quinoa, fight me). Because these tiny, little dictators with their sticky hands and dramatic sighs are mine. And if being their human vending machine means I get to watch them swing their legs on my couch eating a banana I peeled with the rage of a thousand suns…I’ll take it.
(But seriously Tawny, you’re eight. You have thumbs. Use them.)
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