04 May 2006
just a garage
Two cleaned the garage!!!! All on her own, all by herself, without being told to, and it's not even "her job." (I have grown to hate the oft-whined singsong, "But it's not my JOB," almost as much as, say, the equally ubiquitous "How come so-and-so got such-and-such, and I didn't?!")
She stacked, sorted, stashed, swept, straightened and organized.
I understand that this would feel like four major holidays all rolled up into one in most any household. It certainly feels like that in my house. But it also brings me back--to Two's first year home.
Her desperate need for predictability, for security and safety, manifested itself as her own remarkably peculiar version of an insistence on order. I tend to be one of those "put the furniture at an angle" types. The wee stick-skinny Two viewed this proclivity with the same disdain she viewed cheese, already-open water bottles, anything offered to her as a gift (even if she really wanted it), and vast numbers of other offenses against nature.
So she'd line her blocks up one by one in a single line across the floor, for instance. Books were designed, according to her notion of things, by divine providence to be stacked flat, one on top of the other, not arrayed with their front covers displayed in the kids' bookcase I'd snagged from a going-out-of-business thrift store. And I'd constantly find my favorite reading chair shoved into a right-angle relation to the wall despite my steering it back into its proper angle several times a day.
The culmination of the Order Wars came the day that Two decided, on her own and all by herself, to put the playroom to rights. It did look like a lightning-struck swap meet most days, to do her point of view justice.
So, after she'd been busy in there a while, I adjusted my "Chipper Mom" face, located my "Chirpy 'good job!'" mom tone, and ventured into the Cleaning Zone.
No toys on the floor. No anything on the floor. Oh--wait. THERE's the furniture. All of it. All pushed, stacked, and crammed into one corner of the room with a very proud and quite exhausted 38 inch tall, straggly haired Two standing beside it, stick-arms triumphantly spread wide to display her interior decorating glory.
"Chipper" and "Chirpy" degenerated instantly into near-apoplexy as I desperately tried to keep the explosive howl of stunned laughter a private matter between me and my aching insides.
"Look Mama!!! So clean!" announced Two proudly.
Just like she did last night. She's taller and uses more of the floor space in her efforts to produce order, but I can look at her glowing face, and long abundant beautiful hair, and triumphantly spread shapely arms, and see that proud toddler still.
Two gives me the Teen Eyeroll as I tear up while thanking her. "It's just a garage, Mom," she says, slightly exasperated at my emotional excess.
Nuh-uh. Nope. No, it's not.
The ordinary pressures of every day life with its piles of laundry, nearly-missed deadlines, half-eaten lunches, stalagmites of mail/newpapers/homework/bills, unending to-do lists, miscellaneous surround-sound whining, and landmines of pet "accidents"--sometimes this stuff successfully masquerades as, you know, Real Life. But I really do know, even on days when exasperation and exhaustion cloud my vision, that whatever else I am looking at, it's never, ever, "just a garage."
She stacked, sorted, stashed, swept, straightened and organized.
I understand that this would feel like four major holidays all rolled up into one in most any household. It certainly feels like that in my house. But it also brings me back--to Two's first year home.
Her desperate need for predictability, for security and safety, manifested itself as her own remarkably peculiar version of an insistence on order. I tend to be one of those "put the furniture at an angle" types. The wee stick-skinny Two viewed this proclivity with the same disdain she viewed cheese, already-open water bottles, anything offered to her as a gift (even if she really wanted it), and vast numbers of other offenses against nature.
So she'd line her blocks up one by one in a single line across the floor, for instance. Books were designed, according to her notion of things, by divine providence to be stacked flat, one on top of the other, not arrayed with their front covers displayed in the kids' bookcase I'd snagged from a going-out-of-business thrift store. And I'd constantly find my favorite reading chair shoved into a right-angle relation to the wall despite my steering it back into its proper angle several times a day.
The culmination of the Order Wars came the day that Two decided, on her own and all by herself, to put the playroom to rights. It did look like a lightning-struck swap meet most days, to do her point of view justice.
So, after she'd been busy in there a while, I adjusted my "Chipper Mom" face, located my "Chirpy 'good job!'" mom tone, and ventured into the Cleaning Zone.
No toys on the floor. No anything on the floor. Oh--wait. THERE's the furniture. All of it. All pushed, stacked, and crammed into one corner of the room with a very proud and quite exhausted 38 inch tall, straggly haired Two standing beside it, stick-arms triumphantly spread wide to display her interior decorating glory.
"Chipper" and "Chirpy" degenerated instantly into near-apoplexy as I desperately tried to keep the explosive howl of stunned laughter a private matter between me and my aching insides.
"Look Mama!!! So clean!" announced Two proudly.
Just like she did last night. She's taller and uses more of the floor space in her efforts to produce order, but I can look at her glowing face, and long abundant beautiful hair, and triumphantly spread shapely arms, and see that proud toddler still.
Two gives me the Teen Eyeroll as I tear up while thanking her. "It's just a garage, Mom," she says, slightly exasperated at my emotional excess.
Nuh-uh. Nope. No, it's not.
The ordinary pressures of every day life with its piles of laundry, nearly-missed deadlines, half-eaten lunches, stalagmites of mail/newpapers/homework/bills, unending to-do lists, miscellaneous surround-sound whining, and landmines of pet "accidents"--sometimes this stuff successfully masquerades as, you know, Real Life. But I really do know, even on days when exasperation and exhaustion cloud my vision, that whatever else I am looking at, it's never, ever, "just a garage."
