Ten minutes after I asked her not to, the serving spoon was in my mother-in-law’s mouth.
I was standing at the kitchen counter cutting up an apple for my four-year-old. I turned around just in time to see it.
Diane had the big wooden spoon from the soup pot pressed against her lips. She’d been coughing for two days. Her nose was red and raw from tissues. A balled-up Kleenex was sticking out of her cardigan pocket.
She pulled the spoon out of her mouth.
And she dipped it right back into the pot of chicken noodle soup. And stirred.
“Diane!”
“For God’s sake, Claire,” she said. “Stop screaming.”
“You’re sick! That’s Noah’s dinner!”
She set the spoon down on the stove like I’d asked her to hand over her car keys.
“Kids need germs,” she said. “That’s how they build immunity. I raised two boys. They turned out fine.”
I’d made that soup from scratch. I’d boiled a whole chicken that afternoon. I’d chopped every carrot and every stalk of celery. And when I was done, I’d pointed at the ladle sitting right there on the spoon rest, and I’d said, very clearly, “That’s Noah’s dinner. If you want some, pour it into a bowl.”
She’d said, “I heard you.”
Ten minutes later, the spoon was in her mouth.
My husband, Mark, walked into the kitchen right then. He looked at the spoon on the stove. Then at his mother. Then at me.
“Mom,” he said quietly. “You really think Claire’s being ridiculous?”
“Completely,” Diane said.
“And there’s nothing wrong with what you just did?”
“Nothing.”
Mark looked at her for a long moment.
“Okay,” he said.
That was all he said.
And I stood there with the apple knife in my hand, and I thought, here we go again.
My name is Claire Whitman. I’m thirty-four years old. I’m a physical therapy assistant at a clinic in Columbus, Ohio.
And I’d been guarding my own kitchen for five weeks.
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