Spaghetti

     Today we went to the park for an hour and a half. Clara climbed up the corkscrew slide five or six times, raced across the park three or four times, saw some babies and a little boy's pet lizard, and tried every single swing on the swing sets. When we got home, she was ravenous.
     I put leftover rotini noodles on her tray and heated a small bowl of leftover meat sauce in the microwave.  I started to ladle the meat sauce onto her tray.
    "Mommy, no.  I want this," she said, taking the bowl from me.
    "Spoon!" she said.
    "Can you say 'please?'"
    "Hes."
    "Okay then, say 'please.'"
    She nodded cheerfully.  "Hes."
    I brought her a spoon with Minnie Mouse on the handle.  She examined it thoughtfully and then dexterously slid it sideways into the sauce.  She began to softly mutter out the side of her mouth, her voice high-pitched and garbled, as though she held marbles in her cheek.
     Now came the first bite.  Her muttering became philosophical, then brave.  She would take that first bite, no matter what it held.  She would do it because there was no other way, because sometimes a man had to do hard things. The tension was appalling.
     She put the spoon into her mouth, flipped it upside down so it cupped her tongue. It took a second for the tomato, oregano and meat to saturate her taste buds. She swayed back and forth in her seat and did a little shimmy with her shoulders.
     She picked up the bowl, looked inside with frank delight.  Mounds of glorious, dark-red sauce.  Never had she seen anything so extraordinary.  She must examine it more closely, must delve into the depths of its peppery secrets.
     Last night at dinner the arms of the chair that held her booster seat had been giant slides.  She'd pretended her sauce-covered fists were people and made them slide down the chair arms. She made them squeal in fear as they crashed and got ouchies at the bottom.  (Well, what did they expect?  Slides were fun, but they could be dangerous, too.)
     Today the victims were chunks of hamburger.  She piled them on her lap, under her tray.  They would be safe there.  And, someday--if they were good--someday they could come back and join their friends again in the bowl.
     "You are covered in lunch," I said.
     She looked up in surprise.
     I brought her upstairs and ran a bath.  I had to wash sauce off her belly, her ears, her neck.  I had to scrub it out of her hair.  When I finally lifted her out of the bath, there were chunks of meat and pasta floating in the water.