The Night I Forgot to Make Dinner — A Rerun From the Archives

Note to Readers: I hope you have been enjoying the reruns from the archives of the A Case of the Human Condition. I posted them before I sent myself on a writer’s retreat.

Here’s another — it’s a post that originally ran in the Oakland Tribune when the kids were little and Jon was the main cook in the house. It’s one of the essays that will be going into the book I’m putting together while on retreat.

He Was Married to a Feminist

When Jon and I were first married, he knew he’d have to take on his share of the housework. He was married to an outspoken feminist, after all.

My new husband wanted to do the cooking, so I let him have what I considered to be the most fun and creative of the household chores. That way, I figured, this equal division of household labor idea of mine would actually get implemented.

Ten years into our marriage, Jon went from freelancing to working full-time with a long commute. It fell to me to take over the weekday cooking. By then my cooking skills had gotten pretty rusty. Things did not go so well.

Confessions of a So-So Wife: The Night I Forgot to Make Dinner

By Barbara Falconer Newhall, The Oakland Tribune, June 14, 1987

It was going to be the dinner hour of my dreams, the married life I had imagined for myself as a girl back in suburban Detroit.

The table would be set, the chicken roasted to golden perfection. The children, fresh-scrubbed, would welcome their daddy home from work with sweet-smelling hugs.

Maybe I would even put candles and a clean tablecloth on the table.

Jon had taken a job. A real job. No more working out of the corner of Christina’s bedroom. From now on, he would be writing programs for a Marin software company.

This was Jon’s first day on the new job. He was out of bed at 6:45 a.m. and on the road by 8. He wouldn’t be home till nearly 7 p.m.

A long day. When he arrived home, I resolved, dinner would be waiting, a bottle of wine uncorked and breathing, a blush of lipstick on his wife’s lips.

But I forgot.

Jon had done the shopping on Sunday. The chicken, the broccoli, the potatoes and the wine were ready. All I had to do was cook.

But I forgot.

I Remembered the Play Dates, but Forgot to Make Dinner

I remembered my usual Monday chores. I took Peter to play at Dan’s in Berkeley. I dropped Christina at Lindsay’s in San Leandro, fifteen miles to the south. I stopped at the bank and the shoe store. I picked both kids up. I even remembered to be home by 6, in time for dinner.

Roh Ki Hwa of Seoul, Korea, was an hour late making lunch for her husband at a company picnic last month. She had forgotten about daylight savings time.

Hwa hanged herself.

Could I do less?

Hwa had forgotten lunch. I had missed dinner. Hwa had an excuse, a time switch. My only excuse was three brain-numbing trips between Berkeley and San Leandro.

On the other hand, someone had to make dinner at our house that night.

Last Minute Dinner Prep

Dutifully, I put aside my guilt and popped a videotape into the VCR for my two sweaty children. They had to be out of the way if my dream dinner was to be ready by 6:45.

The telephone rang. It was Jon, calling from the office. “How’s dinner going?”

I had cooked dinner maybe a dozen times in our 10 years of marriage. Jon thought I might need coaching.

“I forgot.”

“You forgot?”

“Maybe it was a Freudian slip,” I suggested. “Fear of cooking or something.”

“Barbara,” was all he said.

“It’s OK,” I said rashly. “It’ll be ready.”

Frantically, I cut the roasting chicken into broiler-size pieces. It would cook faster that way. Too late for baked potatoes. I put water on for bow tie noodles.

There was no time for the lipstick, let alone the clean tablecloth and candles.

I Used to be a Good Cook, Honest

In my single woman days, I used to be a pretty good cook. I made an out-of-this-world apple kuchen, a divine wiener schnitzel.

But Jon only recalls the meal I made on our first date — raw shrimp seared in Bermuda onion and lemon juice, accompanied by alfalfa sprouts dressed with sesame seed oil.

My friend Joan, also a single woman, had given me the recipe.

Joan assured me that my date, who I hoped would be falling in love with me that evening, would be deeply impressed by my creativity.

Jon barely ate his dinner. Months later, he confided that it gave him heartburn.

I have since lost touch with Joan. I wonder if she is still single.

Soon after our wedding, Jon took over the cooking and grocery shopping. He was, after all, a liberated man married to a liberated woman.

At first, I hovered about the kitchen, making sure he didn’t scorch the new cookware.

Then I realized that Jon wanted — not to help with the cooking — but to be in charge of it. If I didn’t leave him alone, he might quit cooking altogether.

He didn’t scorch the cookware.

That was 10 years ago. Now, with Jon working full time and my working part time, it made sense for me to cook again.

The Monday after the forgotten chicken, Jon left spaghetti for me to cook. Pretty simple. So simple, in fact, we have had spaghetti every Monday for weeks.

Last Monday, I finally got it right.

Jon’s So-So Wife, Who — Nearly — Forgot to Make Dinner

When Jon arrived home, the kids were bathed and in their pajamas. The candles were not on the table, but dinner was.

“This is wonderful,” Jon said. “A nice dinner, a really nice dinner.”

No matter that the phone rang twice as we ate and that the children, in their clean pajamas, had escaped to the yard to make mud pies.

This was as close as I was going to get to the dinner of my girlish dreams.

© 1987, The Oakland Tribune. Reprinted by permission

More Jon stories at “My Computer is Dead, Long Live My Omputer” and “For Wetter or Drier, I’m Married to California.”

And — Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!