“Are you making sauce?” Julia asks.

“It’s actually soup,” I say.

“Actually, it’s ketchup,” Will says.  He’s 4 and everything is better with ketchup.

“It’s soup.”

“The cold one?” Julia raises her eyebrows while I nod.  “It still looks like sauce. You could use it as sauce.”

And thus, the gazpacho sauce was borne.  We had it on raw summer squash ribbons.  We dumped it on noodles.  And we drank it as soup. Sometimes, kids give you the perspective you need in order to reframe your life or your day or your work issue.  Other times, like this morning, they wake you up before the alarm, scream at each other and demand you break up the arguments about who flicked who, and test out every inappropriate word they know and have to miss the sleepover because of it.  Oh well.

Try some soup-sauce and chill, Mom.