When the world’s worst multitasker needs space

During the morning rush, as I pack lunches, sign neglected forms, twist hair into ponytails, and try to feed my children in 17 minutes or less, I find myself channeling the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. I don’t mean that I play “Wipe Out” whilst making sandwiches and learning to do the Pechanga, though that would be swell.

No, I find myself quoting Johnny Castle when it comes to my personal space in the kitchen: “This is my dance space. This is your dance space. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine.”

For a family of five, a morning routine is nothing if not a dance, five people all skating, sliding, and shoving their way around the most important room in the house: the kitchen.

And for me, until recently, mornings in the kitchen—specifically, making lunches in the morning—had been awful.

The actual task, of course, is simple. Get cheese out of fridge. Put cheese on bread. Cut sandwich in half and place in reusable, BPA-free, non-guilt-inducing container. Repeat. (The one upside of having picky eaters? Simple sandwiches).

So my problem wasn’t really making the lunches; my problem was being constantly interrupted, physically and mentally, while making them.

Now, I know there are people who work well in the middle of chaos. I am not those people.

I remember visiting the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and watching the crowded sea of people hollering and making hand signals on the trading floor. It was fascinating to watch—but the thought of being down there and trying to work? That seemed like a close neighbor to Dante’s Fifth Circle of Hell.

And if my difficulty with making lunches didn’t quite rise to Dante levels, it certainly felt like my very own trading pit. Like trying to rinse grapes and put them in a container while having a permission slip shoved in your face just as the NASDAQ falls and someone yells, “Sell 30 April at 142!” (Thank you Trading Places).

I was tired of such a simple gesture—making lunches—making me feel so irritable and anxious. There had to be a better way.

One of the good parts of getting to be . . . a-hem . . . a particular age is that you start to know who you really are, and what you need. And how to ask for it.

Me? I need space. Physical room to maneuver, quiet time to think. Space.

It was time to ask for it.

So, this year, on a particularly chaotic morning in our kitchen, I issued a decree. I looked at my fellow dancers, and I told them, “After 7 a.m.? When I’m making lunches? No coming into this space, and no asking me to do anything else or sign anything else until I’m done.”

I was standing between the kitchen sink and our small, butcher block island. I used my hands to demonstrate the invisible line: Everything on this side of the island? You. Everything on THIS side of the island? Me.

My children and my husband were pretty certain this decree seemed a little nuts and totally arbitrary, but they indulged me. And the most amazing thing happened, as if often does when a family has the good sense to indulge the mama—it worked.

I’m not saying our mornings are bliss. But bliss is boring and overrated anyway. Our mornings, though, are better.

My family and I have, as they say in mafia movies, an understanding.

The children stay on their side and eat breakfast. I stay on mine and make the lunches. Husband helps out by cleaning the kitchen before 7 a.m. then brilliantly stays out of the way.

While I make the lunches, we listen to music. We talk a little—but the pleasant sort of talk, not the “did you sign . . . ? Have you filled out . . . ? Where did my—, what time is—?” sorts of demands and questions that make me revert to air-traffic-controlling mode. I save those for after the lunches are made. One step, one task at a time. And it’s better.

Being a part of a family is not always easy. At its best, though, it allows us a safe space in which the people whom we care about the most accept our strange quirks and idiosyncrasies and love us just the same. I can’t multitask while making a cheese sandwich. I require an inordinate amount of personal and physical space. And I am prone to issuing decrees.

I am also, it turns out, inclined to create “we have an understanding” scenarios in my family, in which I am, apparently, the mob boss. Ah, well. If the cannoli fits.