“Mom? Since it’s a three-day weekend, can I go to Joann’s tonight after dinner?”
I’ve never met this Joann she’s talking about, but I’m not worried. She wasn’t going to some unknown friend’s house for a party, she wanted to go to JoAnn Fabrics. She’s working on a costume for the next anime/comicon/concert, I’ve lost track.
My oldest came home from college for this Martin Luther King weekend. She and my youngest plan to do some running around to thrift shops to help my oldest find clothes for a costume for an upcoming concert.
Not only are they not getting into trouble, but my daughters get along very well; sharing mutual interests of art, anime, technology, sarcasm and humor. When my oldest is home, they end up in one bedroom or the other, crazy laughter emanating throughout the house.
They used to fight when they were young; my oldest having a penchant for hitting when she wasn’t getting her way, my youngest completely embarrassed by anything her older sister did or said. My youngest also had a volatile temper when she was little; terrible twos from 18 months to around 5 years old.
When they fought, my rule was to ignore them as long as they weren’t bothering me or drawing blood. If the disagreement interfered with my peace, I intervened, sending them to their rooms until they got back to a place of goodwill.
I don’t know when the moment of common understanding came for them; but these days, we all enjoy the cease-fire a reciprocal perception brings.
However, my biggest complaint about my children continues. Over Christmas break, they had a friend overnight. I got up around midnight to get a glass of water when I ran into them in the kitchen. Their friend’s specialty is encrusted chicken breast and she was searching the cupboards for bread crumbs. Do people buy bread crumbs? I just make them out of bread. Once I got them set up, I went back to bed.
The next morning, I woke up to the aftermath of hurricane teen. The kitchen was a wreck; breadcrumbs spread hither and yon. I didn’t follow my first instinct, which was to drag them out of bed to clean the kitchen.
My sister was visiting and we chuckled as we picked through the kitchen making our breakfast, then went off to run some errands. Around about 1:00pm, I texted my youngest, “Clean the kitchen before I get home.”
Apparently, she read the text just as they were running out the door to head to JoAnn fabrics. They turned around and cleaned up the kitchen. When I got home she said, “I was planning on cleaning it up eventually.”
But I know better; there is that hope that mom will just think it’s part of the normal messy kitchen and will clean it up. That’s really why they leave messes about. I’m not alone, though. I was having coffee with a girlfriend the other day and she was complaining about her four kids’ lack of help over the Christmas break; a couple of her kids are in their 20s.
No, this is a flaw that won’t resolve itself until they get homes of their own. But if midnight cooking is the biggest problem I have with my children, I can live with that.
Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. Currently her kitchen remains free of midnight cooking. You can also read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.” Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.
