Bread and Bread

Artist Minna Dubin started making #MomLists as a way to continue her artistic practice when time was fragmented but her parenting experience called out for documentation. She encourages others to make them too.  Photo by Nong Vang / Unsplash 1. Our routine is already haphazard. You ate peanut butter crackers and a cookie for dinner. Can I even call it a routine? Or dinner? 2. Neither of us is good at this—the pivot from semi-solidity into liquid night. 3. Your other mom works late. We Facetime with her and you cry into the camera. 4. You shift again. We sing “The Scientist” (the Glee version). Your voice is sweet and I marvel that you already carry a tune better than I do. 5. Your bedtime babble: a pastiche of airplanes, police dogs, your school friends’ catch phrases. 6. The negotiation phase: You run to the living room for “one toy!” I eat the quesadilla you abandoned next to the bed. 7. Yes, we eat in bed. 8. You are distraught. It was your favorite “taco.” ...

This is one of my occasional letters to Dash. This time I used the #MomLists feature in Mutha Magazine as my prompt. 1. Every time you see a wreath, you shout “Nana!” She made the one with gingerbread men and red ribbons that hangs between our living and dining rooms. Nana is the Queen of Comedy in your book. Last time she babysat you, you stayed up till nine. She told Mama “He wasn’t interested in going to bed.” As if bedtime were a hobby you’d considered and abandoned, like golf. 2. When you see worms in books, you say “Mommy!” For a minute, I was scared you’d had some premonition about me getting cancer and becoming skinny and bald again. Then I remembered I have a tattoo of a snake on my back. You must watch me as I walk away. 3. We still don’t know why you say “Mama!” when you see one particular Andy Warhol drawing of a panda, or Eric Carle’s Red Bird Red Bird. 4. You say “Santa!” though you prefer the ones in books and store windows to actual men in red suits....