There isn’t a photo today, unless my mantra-cup, “Bless This Hot Mess” can be my actual mantra. There is a meal, a beautiful meal that New York Times Cooking thinks a regular person can make in forty-five minutes. A meal that involves chopping then roasting cashews, skinning then mincing fresh ginger, garlic, chopping a bell pepper into bits, washing rice, slicing two-inch sections of green onions, and preparing cilantro. Also cutting and cooking chicken before the oven part. I don’t have a photo of my youngest and my husband and me, making a mess of this kitchen before I cleaned it, trying to make this meal in forty-five minutes between the three of us.

I just have this. This meal to eat while we listen to and argue about Bruce Springsteen (The BOSS) and discuss our days.

Oh, our days. Bruce was under pressure to change a card (a card as big as a board game and twice as heavy), Rio was under pressure to meet her social and familial weekend obligations, me under the pressure of society to not tell a student’s caseworkers that her foster mother isn’t good enough because.

Because there are no more foster mothers available. Because it isn’t horrible enough that her mother was murdered by the Taliban, and that she’s living in a home that doesn’t recognize or celebrate her culture or speak her language, because she may never see her brothers and father and baby sister again.

It isn’t enough. It is never enough. The crying, the screaming, the desire to be perfect, the accusations, the pain that seeps through every word, the trauma that breathes through every breath.

I wish I could just change a too-heavy card, or balance my sleepover with my obligation to my grandparents, or just be a kid or just be a human who doesn’t have to carry the weight of all these humans.

But I can’t. I can’t cook this meal in forty-five minutes, NYT Cooking, and you should stop lying to people. You can’t bring your mother back, and you should stop lying to people. You shouldn’t make false accusations, and you should stop lying to people.

People who could lose their jobs, their lives, and all the love they’ve given in twenty years of carrying the weight of these kids. People who put on a musical rehearsal of Beauty and the Beast just so my poor kids could see it. People who spend half of their summer taking your kids to every place they could ever imagine because they couldn’t see those places otherwise. People who love your kids as fiercely as you do and for some reason you can’t see it,

You can’t see me.

What does it mean to be a teacher in the twenty-first century? It carries a weight that you can’t imagine carrying because nothing, nothing is more enticing than a 24/7 entertainment device that every kid carries in their pocket. Nothing is more enduring than teenage love or parental defense. Nothing matters more than a grade. Nothing compares to the TikTok video or Instagram caption–not a cultural connection, a passion for language, or a pile of free clothes.

It is like this meal. Sticky rice coconut chicken. It has everything: cilantro, ginger, coconut milk, basmati rice, a yellow bell pepper, garlic minced to perfection, chicken broth, scallions, hot sauce, a dutch oven pan that fits into the best-ever toaster oven, a bubbling bite with perfect spice… Everything.

But it’s a lie. It’s not a Wednesday night meal. It does not take forty-five minutes to prepare.

It takes years, twenty years of patience and a pinch of forgiveness to make this possible.

And you can taste it in every bite. Every bite that you put in your mouth and every bite that bites you back.

Taste it. The creamy coconut, the sriracha, the beauty of the world swirling in the rice.

And bite back.