The baddest life
I want to like weekends. I try to like them. But my children expect me to take them outside or play with them or something.
But our kitchen was in bad shape. Not just bad from my pathological and completely pitiful attempts at remodeling, but crusted crockpot and four-day-old blender residue and spilled potting soil and unidentifiable gunk on the floor bad. So I snapped on the rubber gloves and began scrubbing and pouring Clorox on everything. I told the girls to go play, something I was under the impression mothers were entitled to say once in a while. I thought it was a reasonable request, the kind of thing that even Ma Ingalls or Coretta Scott King might have said from time to time, while wiping their hands on their aprons and looking sturdy and respectable and fine.
Sophie was having none of it. She sat under a table alternately hollering and weeping: “You never do anything fun with me! I hate this house! I don’t like anybody who lives in this house! I want to be adopted by somebody and go live somewhere else!”
I told her that wasn’t going to happen, because Angelina and Brad have a lot on their plate right now.
“WHAT? WHY NOT?”
“Because Daddy and I would have to agree to let somebody adopt you. And there’s no way we would do that. We’re keeping you. So you’re stuck with us.”
She followed me into the bleach-reeking kitchen. “Why are you talking nicer to Hannah? You ALWAYS talk in a nice voice to her and in a mad voice to me!”
“Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Hannah is not yelling in my face and telling me she wants to live with somebody else.”
Soph flopped miserably against the counter.
“Don’t!” I bellowed. “Bleach! Chemicals! Don’t lean against the chemicals!”
She yelled, “THEN WHAT CAN I DO IN THIS LIFE?”
“You can do a lot of things in this life! You can go into any other room in this house! You can play with all of the toys you have, and that is a LOT OF TOYS! You can go to the bathroom! You can draw a picture! You can read a book! You can do all of these things RIGHT NOW!”
She stomped out of the room and immediately began fighting with her sister over a deflated soccer ball. Because this is also something she can do in this life.
I kept on scrubbing and greedily inhaling Clorox fumes, hoping for chemical-induced transcendence.
The day continued skiing poorly downhill. When I asked Soph to clean up her room before bed: “WHY DO I HAVE TO CLEAN UP MY ROOM BY MYSELF BUT YOU ALWAYS HELP HANNAH? YOU NEVER HELP ME! YOU NEVER HELP ME DO ANYTHING!”
“I never help you with anything? I help you all the time! I am your mother! HELPING YOU IS ALL I DO!”
As I huffed off to the bathroom with her cheerful little sister (who gets really really really sunny and serene when everyone else is grumpy), I heard Soph mutter under her breath, “THIS IS THE BADDEST LIFE I EVER HAD.”
52 comments March 19th, 2006