Time and Again

Take One

Cassie unloaded the dishwasher before taking a quick trip through the dining room and family room picking up a trail of half eaten cookies, dripping sippy cups and forgotten toys. She glanced at the digital clock display on the home entertainment center. Six-fifteen. Kevin would be home soon and she had yet to think about dinner.

She dropped the toys into the castle-shaped toy box, sitting in the corner of the family room, and returned to the kitchen. The kitchen was a stainless steel haven complete with all the modern conveniences and, even with those, she still spent the best part of her day either loading or unloading the dishwasher or feeding Tim and Tasha, her eighteen-month-old twins. Even with the benefit of artificial flavorings guaranteed to entice the pickiest eater and mineral enhanced products, the twins found it more fun to throw the food than to eat it.

This was not what she envisioned for her future when she graduated with a degree in cryoptic engineering. She thought she would be working for NASA creating cryochambers capable of self-maintenance during extended space travel. Marrying Kevin had changed all of that. His parents had surprised them with a parental license at their wedding. Kevin was ecstatic. Without his dad pulling some strings within the Department of Health, Social Services and Welfare, it might have been years before they had been granted the right to have children. Cassie was so deeply in love; she could not bear to disappoint him. So, thirteen months and six days from their wedding day, Tim and Tasha were born. The most life-altering requirement for a parental license was for one parent to stay at home and care for the children until they reached the age of ten. Cassie seemed the logical choice. Her career was just beginning. Kevin had already built up a respectable clientele for his firm.

‘By the time Tim and Tasha are ten, the cryochamber will be perfected without me.’ Cassie pushed a strand of rust colored hair out of her face and punched up the menu program on the kitchen monitor. It was time to go to the grocery store again. They were down to only a couple of balanced meals before their supplies would be depleted.

The menu program was Cassie’s favorite part of working in the kitchen. When she shopped, she scanned the items in her cart against the supply disk then popped it back the monitor when she got home. Voila, the menu program updated the food supply tally and created menu options correlating between what she had on hand and the pre-set recipe file of her family’s favorite recipes. If they weren’t trying to save money, she could even set the monitor on automatic resupply and the groceries would be brought to her. No more dragging toddlers through crowded stores. No more trying to manage both children while bringing in the grocery bags.

While dinner simmered, Cassie went to her bedroom and changed from the sweats, best suited for chasing rambunctious toddlers, into an emerald green shift and a pair of black pumps. She may be a stay-at-home mom but she refused to look like one for her husband. She dug through her jewelry box until she found the pair of antique clip-on earrings her grandmother had given her for her sixteenth birthday. The earrings were simple brushed silver buttons outlined with a chain of rhinestones. Next to the earrings laid a silver cuff bracelet intricately etched and inlaid with thumb-size opals.