And You Learn To . . .

Last weekend I ended up with  about two weeks worth of work and two days in which to do them. A friend of my eldest has come to live with us and I needed to move room assignments around and put up beds, not to mention finish up the spring cleaning I was in the middle of, which had left stacks of garbage bags filled with out-grown clothes piled all over the house. Plus, the zoning enforcement department apparently decided that the neighborhood had been insufficiently prompt in addressing post-snow melt landscaping issues, leaving everyone in a five block radius scrambling with rakes and shovels and the dumpsters overflowing.

My husband was out of town, and both of the bigger kids were gone for the weekend, leaving me as helpers one eight-year-old and one five-year-old. My prospects looked grim.

The thing about being a grown-up, though, is that you forget that work can be fun. Filling a barrel with leaves in order to start compost was one more chore on my list; for the kids, it was a good time, even if my daughter ended up with a triangular bruise over her nose from an abrupt encounter with the end of a rake. I looked at the bunk beds, up from the cellar, and saw a depressing amount of caked-on dust and spiderwebs; the kids saw an opportunity to use spray bottles of (mild) cleanser.

As the day progressed and the rooms started to take shape, I started to feel like it just might be possible. I put on my favorite Suzanne Vega C.D. and the kids danced around to "As a Child," brooms clutched Harry Potter style between their knees. They were having a good day.

"What's this song about?" my daughter asked (which has been a favorite question of hers since she was three and that question about "Blood Makes Noise" from that same album led to an impromptu lesson about metaphors).

"It's about growing up, more or less," I told her.

"I like it when it says 'All of the people depend on you not to hurt them,'" my son said. "That's a good message to remember." He put the broom on the floor, bristles down, and swept vigorously.

At the end of the day, I still had a unmanageable amount of work to finish, but it felt okay. We indulged in brie and fruit salad for dinner and went to bed late, the house far quieter than usual with just the three of us in it.

The last line of "As a Child" is ". . . and you learn to have a life." You learn to be depended on, and to be in charge, and to get things done. Unfortunately, you also forget that squirting things with a spray bottle is a lot of fun, even if it is technically a chore. You also forget that small people can be surprisingly efficient. We didn't get everything done that weekend, but all of the kids had their own new bed to get into Sunday night, and that was something. Plus I'd spent some quality time with my littles, and that was something else. The yard was still piled with soggy leaves, but the kids had some new favorite songs.

Seems like a decent trade-off to me.
Topics: Suzanne Vega , bunk beds , kids