There are potatoes roasting

A three month old girl is sitting in a chair that bounces slowly with a smooth, steady tempo. She dawns a suit of red velvet.

A three year old boy is fanning cards and pencils over the apartment's tile floor. He has already forgotten the trauma of the big red balloon. He is chewing, with an open mouth, dry sugared cereal.

An eight year old girl is in the bath, lathered and rinsed {and again} with handfuls of soap and a bottle's full-exhale of shampoo. Her day clothes are limp and scattered across the bathroom floor; pajamas awaiting her, folded, on the sink.

An established young gentleman is dicing sweet bell peppers in the kitchen. He yawns, rinses a cucumber and continues to chop with a knife that needs sharpening.

There is a mother with rolled sleeves moving from bathtub to kitchen, smoothing out the creases in the carpet and soothing wounds of lost balloons. Her voice carries into the corners of the high white ceilings and she lifts her nose to make sure the potatoes aren't burning.