Happiness In a Corelle Bowl

By some bizarre twist of fate Vinay and I got to eat dinner on Sunday night all by ourselves. We had company over at 6:30 and wisely fed Amiya before their visit. Then they were out the door, Amiya went to bed and Kevalin was snoozing all by himself without being attached to me or resting on Vinay. The higher beings were definitely smiling on the Gupta household last night.

This was a meal that Vinay and I used to love to cook together in the pre-children days - even the pre-marriage days. There were nights when we'd cook together for the sheer happiness of being in the same space and working towards a common goal. I won't go so far as to say we'd crack a bottle of wine and try out one of Julia's recipes, but we'd chop, simmer, stir and serve for no reason but because we liked to do so as a team. Now our team cooking is driven by the need to have dinner on the table in four minutes flat before Kevalin revs up and in the hopes of getting Amiya to bed so we get a few moments of conversation before we nod off at 8:15.

Our meal involved nothing more than fresh tomatoes, shrimp, olive oil, garlic and pasta. Plus leftover salad from a meal a friend brought over. Back in the day I would have had a better shape of pasta for the sauce and we definitely wouldn't have eaten a salad slathered in ranch dressing, but I have to tell you this has honestly never, ever tasted so good. I didn't have to cut up Vinay's shrimp for him and he didn't have to cajole me to try just one bite of tomato. To be honest, we were very much like one of those old married couples who go out to eat together and then never say two words. The silence was beautiful and neither of us felt the need to intrude upon it. In our inexpensive Corelle bowls and our kitchen whose stainless steel sink is certainly not stainless at the moment, a little glimmer of happy reality that maybe our definition of normal has changed from the early days of shrimp pasta dinners but it's changed in a very lovely way. We just need to savor both the chaos and the quiet.