Paul and I have this thing we do. It flies in the face of an almost sacred convention: that families should eat dinner together. That’s what we fly in the face of. I’m flinching, anticipating produce (produce if we’re lucky) flung in our faces in return for this admission.

Paul and I have four children, ages 7 and under. One of Paul’s friends said it best: we’re no longer playing one-on-one, we’re doing zone defense. (Or it was something that that effect, anyway. Sports metaphors don’t quite reach me.) Dinner time is a difficult time of day: I’m tired and I’ve had my fill of children; Paul is tired and has spent an hour with children climbing all over him; the children are tired and getting hyper and wild and crabby. So what we do is, we divide and conquer. Paul takes the older boys and handles their dinner at a table we have in the living room. I take the twins and handle their dinner in the kitchen.

When the children are fed, we continue the division for their bedtime routine: Paul supervises Robert and William as they brush their teeth and get into their pajamas, and then he reads to them; meanwhile I read to the babies while they’re still in their high chairs, and then I get them into their pajamas and put them in their cribs.

Then, when all the children are theoretically asleep in their beds like little lambs, that’s when Paul and I have our dinner. We eat together, just us.