Parenting

"The help of a curious toddler is bracing, vigorous: They are people as yet unburdened with neuroses. I may try to spoon flour carefully into a measuring cup held over a wide mixing bowl, and then invite her to overturn it gently — only to be dusted in a burst of powder, rising cloudlike from the spot where she eagerly flung the whole lot of it. I have witnessed softening sticks of butter crushed in tiny fists, whole plum tomatoes skewered on searching fingers. I find myself faced with conflicting anxieties: If I’m too adamant that everything be done just so, she’ll develop some kind of complex — God forbid, the same kind I have. If I let her rip, whatever dish I embarked upon with such high hopes will come out wrong.

I train my face in a vague Renaissance smile as she takes an egg in hand. This could go any number of places, hardly any of them good. If I’m fortunate, I’ll just be picking shell fragments out of a prep dish with tweezers."