Living through lockdown with young children has changed many of the priorities of parenting – but eating dinner at 6pm isn’t something we can do forever
An unforeseen side-effect of adulthood is how babyish it has caused my life to become. The most humiliating example, which I share here as a sort of therapy and only because we are in our safe space, is that these days, I eat dinner at six. Six o’clock, God it’s practically lunchtime, the sun high and looking down at us with its own particular brand of hot disgust. But this is when our children eat, transforming quickly into sad and hissing cats if pasta is not installed into their mouths within a regimented time slot, and so, during the first lockdown of intense childcare to avoid cooking twice, we started to join them.
Funny how quickly things slip into the sea, a seemingly small decision rolling over evening by evening until now my stomach rumbles at half past five, having trained itself like a dog. This new regime, however, would not have been possible if the Awfulness hadn’t forced us to stay home, and we were still working out in the world, at our office and restaurant. Six o’clock used to be when I would shut down my computer and start sloping out to the station. It used to be the time my boyfriend’s shift at work began. In the past, a childminder, after-school club or kind grandparent would be responsible for feeding my daughter, one of us blustering in gratefully afterwards to read a story. Since the pandemic closed schools and shielded grandparents at exactly the time we had our second baby, we have inevitably reshuffled and squeezed our careers in order to watch our children.
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