I swear this is exactly how the conversation went

We’re in the car, discussing pizza versus Taco Bell. Shut up, it’s a Sunday, we wanted to treat ourselves.

Hubby decides on pizza. We can have it delivered, so we head home. The baby is asleep in the carseat, and the rest of us wait in the van while hubby carries her inside.

The second he’s out of the car, Mary erupts with complaints: I wanted Taco Bell! I don’t WANT pizza.

Me: Sorry, honey, today we’re having pizza.

Mary: But I like Taco Bell much better.

Me, because I am a total softie: Tell you what, we’ll have it for lunch on Tuesday.

Mary, not missing a beat: No! I can’t have Taco Bell!

Me: Bwah?

Mary: I can’t. I don’t like it.

Hello Twinkness my old friend

There are just really a lot of kids in this house. Four or five at least. Frankly I’m not quite sure because they don’t stand still long enough to be counted. All I know is it takes like half an hour to buckle them into the van, every time. Also, the diapers. I’m pretty sure there are only two in diapers but if that’s so then how is it possible I am ALWAYS changing one? Or needing to.

So today I was at the grocery store with all of them. I had called two different friends, hoping to pawn some of the kids off and therefore save myself from the buckling, but no one was home. I bet they were at the pool. Lounging, even. But, you know, passel of kids, my choice, Mrs. Devout Catholic and all that, plus you know I’m really extremely fond of them except for the incessant diapers and the buckling, so I piled them in the van and forty-five minutes later everyone was buckled (and two of them? Also in need of a diaper change) and we went to the supermarket. Which I really don’t think is very super, because it doesn’t carry Paul Newman’s Sesame-Ginger salad dressing. I ask you.

Milk. More milk. Several blocks of cheese, to complement the milk. Look! Yogurt. We are the all-dairy-all-the-time family. Who needs vitamin C? That’s why God created Flintstones chewables. But I realize I can’t check out with a cart containing only one food group (that reminds me: ice cream), so I branch out and get some chocolate too. That’s a food group, right? Or possibly a pharmaceutical.

Meat, there’s another group. Look, kids! Just one more and we wil have achieved balance! Where’s the bread?

And that’s when I saw them. On the bottom row, below the Pepperidge Farm Farmstyle 100% Whole Wheat and Also Caramel Color and Corn Syrup.

Twinkies.

Oh my little friends, it has been a long time. For ten years now I have been a Good Mother and shunned you. I have long since ceased to notice you: like a primitive tribeswoman, I ignored you until you did not exist.

But you have come back from the underworld. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the exhaustion: perhaps lack of sleep has edged me to a hallicinatory state the likes of which Carlos Castaneda only dreamed of. All I know is, you’re back, and your voice is sweet. You called to me from the bread aisle, and I answered.

I diverted the children’s attention with a ruse: Look! Do we know that guy? (pointing the other direction)

No, Mommy, I don’t think so, says Polly, all sweet innocence. Little does she know that I have whisked a box of my new best friends into the cart under the shredded wheat while she was peering down the aisle.

Back in the parking lot, I hardly noticed the buckling. My mind was filled with the crinkle of plastic, the soft sticky sponge, the (my heart beats faster) cream filling.

And now the children are all in bed, the whole five or six of them, I swear there’s another one every time I turn around. And I’m alone with my ten individually wrapped best friends. I mean nine.

Actually eight. Shut up.