Ten minutes after I asked her not to, my mother-in-law put the serving spoon in her mouth.
I watched her do it from the doorway of the kitchen. She had a wad of tissues balled up in one hand and her reading glasses pushed up on her head. Her nose was bright red from two days of blowing it. She lifted the big wooden spoon out of the soup pot, blew on it, slurped the broth right off it, and smacked her lips.
Then she dipped it back into the pot and stirred.
“Diane!”
She jumped and turned around.
“For God’s sake, Claire. Stop screaming.”
“You’re sick,” I said. “That’s Noah’s dinner. I told you. Ten minutes ago. I pointed at the ladle. I said, if you want some, pour it in a bowl.”
She set the spoon down on the stove and rolled her eyes at me. Actually rolled them. Like a teenager.
“Kids need germs,” she said. “That’s how they build immunity. You keep that boy in a plastic bubble, he’s going to catch everything the minute he starts school.”
Behind me, in the living room, my four-year-old son was lying on his stomach on the rug, drawing a purple walrus with a crayon. He was humming to himself.
I looked at the pot. A whole batch of chicken soup. Two hours of work. Fresh thyme from the windowsill. The noodles Noah liked, the little star-shaped ones I had to drive to the Italian grocery for.
Ruined.
And I knew, standing in that doorway, that if I made a fresh batch tomorrow, she’d do it again. And the day after that. And the day after that.
Because she’d been doing it for almost five weeks. 