I Forgot to Defrost the Chicken and Felt Like a Bad Wife

Dear Delyara, I was standing in front of the freezer at 5:27 p.m. looking at the hard frozen chicken breasts like they had personally exposed something shameful in me. I could already hear the clock, the hunger in the house, the family asking what was for dinner, and all I could think was, I failed at the one thing I should have remembered. That voice in me is vicious. Domestic failure becomes moral failure in one breath. We ate cereal and scrambled eggs. Nobody died. The children were thrilled. I still went to bed feeling like I had let everyone down. That’s how old some of this programming is.