I'm expecting company next week so, true to form, I'm now seeing my house through panic-colored glasses. All those things that I meant to get to someday have now become a lot more urgent. Nothing in my house looks the same as it did before I knew I was going to be entertaining and my brain has been writing post-it notes to itself. (Remind boys to pull out those two rusty posts by the front steps. Lay new tile in the bathroom floor.)
I love company, really I do. Since we've moved we're a lot farther away from most of our friends and relatives so having people over is a rare treat. I especially like sitting with everybody at our dining room table, looking through boxes of photos, drinking a cup of coffee and eating something sweet. (Remember to pick up something sweet at the bakery section in the grocery store. Or maybe make raised cinnamon rolls. Do I even own yeast?)
Last time we had a visitor it was a teenager from France and she stayed with us for six weeks. I re-grouted my bathroom shower in her honor, not that she noticed. I mean, she was a teenager. (Re-paint both bathrooms? Or would it be faster to wallpaper?)
I work myself up into this housekeeping tizzy a whole week before everyone's due to show up, cleaning things that I'd never bother to clean otherwise, like under my refrigerator, and organizing things that nobody will ever see, like storage closets and filing cabinets. (Vacuum out all the window sills in the house. Where did all those dead bugs come from?)
Pretty soon I'm snapping at my children to clean their rooms and snarling at my husband to organize the tool shed. Don't they realize how essential it is that our house be perfect in every way before company comes? (Should I go buy a "Bed in a Bag" at K-mart or see if I can find a complete sheet/bedspread/dust ruffle set that's hole-free and actually fits the bed in the guest room?)
Besides the usual housekeeping chores I occasionally catch myself contemplating a whole house makeover or a new landscaping project. (Maybe I can get my neighbor to come pour a cement patio in the back tomorrow. That'll give me a week while it sets up to go buy a table and chairs and maybe find a swordfish on a plaque to jazz it up a little.)
Underneath my panicked outer self I realize how dumb I'm being. I know that the reason people visit is because they want to spend time with us and not because they want to critique my housekeeping and decorating skills. (Order cable for the week that they're here? Or stick with seven channels and adjusting the antenna every time you change stations?)
The outcome to all this frenzied preparation is always the same. I basically chase my own tail right up until the last 24 hours before my company arrives. That's when I abandon all hope of achieving the perfect Better Homes & Gardens House and settle for the Disinfected Domicile instead. At the last moment I race through the house, spritz all available surfaces with bleach and throw all the clutter into the nearest closet. In the end, it's a relief to run out of time for anything but the bare minimum. (Get more bleach. Build more closets.)
My daughter says if I entertained more I wouldn't be as prone to freaking out prior to a visit. I think she's right, but my pool of available dinner party guests is kind of thin right now. I need to be more like Elwood P. Dowd in the movie "Harvey" and start inviting more people over to my house. Elwood never worried about what his house looked like. He just enjoyed talking to people. Besides, he had his sister to keep things up for him. Now that I think of it I can completely understand why she seemed so on edge all the time. It was the thought of all that company coming. (Invite more friends and family to Florida.)
Showing posts with label stress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stress. Show all posts
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Quality time
Today was the usual grab the stack of newspapers from the porch, the wagon from the garage and a pair of drink boxes and cookies and run out to the elementary school to pick the boys up from the bus stop kind of day. It's a good break for me. I fold the papers and listen to Nick and Sam tell me about their respective days at school. A little island of quality time in a hectic sea of work-related stress.
Nick is first in the car and I ask him how it went.
"Terrible," he says.
I immediately suspect the worst but I try to see if I can put it in perspective for him. "Was it a terrible day the whole day long, or just in the morning? Or maybe just before you left?"
"The whole day."
"What happened?"
"Some kid knocked me over."
"On the playground?"
He nods.
I think about how some people’s kids shouldn’t be allowed out on a leash. "What did you do?"
"Told the aide."
Relieved he didn't haul off and punch somebody, I praise his levelheadedness.
"What else happened?"
"I had to stay in for study class."
Dreading the advent of another behavior report, I ask, "How come?"
"We were writing something in class and I didn't finish it."
My heart plummets. "Oh, no, Nick, you're kidding."
At this point, Nick, carefully noting my reaction to this recital of the day’s events, can’t contain himself any longer. He starts laughing uproariously, holding his belly and rocking in his seat, shouting "Pulled your leg! Pulled your leg! Hahahahahahaha! You fall for it every time! Hahahahahaha."
"I hate you, Nick," I say between gritted teeth.
Now Sam announces that he's got his finger stuck in the bolt hole for the trailer hitch which has been rolling around on the floor of my car since spring. It weighs about 10 pounds and he's starting to panic because he can't free his now swollen and hurting finger.
I sigh a long suffering sigh and tell him to come with me. We leave Nick in the car and walk into the school in search of a soap dispenser. Everyone we meet along the way smiles a greeting. Nobody notices that my son is attached to a trailer hitch even though Sam is doing his best to bring it everyone's attention by saying things like, "It''s not my fault," and "It was an accident."
I locate a classroom with a sink and dribble soap on Sam's finger. Then, a little twist, and voila! he's free. He smiles a relieved smile and I begin to see how I can use this to get even with Nick. "Put your finger back in the hole and follow me," I tell him.
We get back to the car, Sam looking convincingly morose and me more grim than usual.
Nick asks, "What's going on?" and I tell him we have to take Sam to the hardware store so we can buy a hacksaw to cut his hand off with. "What?" "Yeah, the soap didn't work." "You're kidding, right? Are you really going to cut his hand off?" He's a little apprehensive but more clearly fascinated by the idea, which is right where I want him.
"Hahahahahaha! Got you! Hahahahaha! You should've seen the look on your face! Hahahahahaha!"
"Aarrrgghh!"
I love quality time.
Nick is first in the car and I ask him how it went.
"Terrible," he says.
I immediately suspect the worst but I try to see if I can put it in perspective for him. "Was it a terrible day the whole day long, or just in the morning? Or maybe just before you left?"
"The whole day."
"What happened?"
"Some kid knocked me over."
"On the playground?"
He nods.
I think about how some people’s kids shouldn’t be allowed out on a leash. "What did you do?"
"Told the aide."
Relieved he didn't haul off and punch somebody, I praise his levelheadedness.
"What else happened?"
"I had to stay in for study class."
Dreading the advent of another behavior report, I ask, "How come?"
"We were writing something in class and I didn't finish it."
My heart plummets. "Oh, no, Nick, you're kidding."
At this point, Nick, carefully noting my reaction to this recital of the day’s events, can’t contain himself any longer. He starts laughing uproariously, holding his belly and rocking in his seat, shouting "Pulled your leg! Pulled your leg! Hahahahahahaha! You fall for it every time! Hahahahahaha."
"I hate you, Nick," I say between gritted teeth.
Now Sam announces that he's got his finger stuck in the bolt hole for the trailer hitch which has been rolling around on the floor of my car since spring. It weighs about 10 pounds and he's starting to panic because he can't free his now swollen and hurting finger.
I sigh a long suffering sigh and tell him to come with me. We leave Nick in the car and walk into the school in search of a soap dispenser. Everyone we meet along the way smiles a greeting. Nobody notices that my son is attached to a trailer hitch even though Sam is doing his best to bring it everyone's attention by saying things like, "It''s not my fault," and "It was an accident."
I locate a classroom with a sink and dribble soap on Sam's finger. Then, a little twist, and voila! he's free. He smiles a relieved smile and I begin to see how I can use this to get even with Nick. "Put your finger back in the hole and follow me," I tell him.
We get back to the car, Sam looking convincingly morose and me more grim than usual.
Nick asks, "What's going on?" and I tell him we have to take Sam to the hardware store so we can buy a hacksaw to cut his hand off with. "What?" "Yeah, the soap didn't work." "You're kidding, right? Are you really going to cut his hand off?" He's a little apprehensive but more clearly fascinated by the idea, which is right where I want him.
"Hahahahahaha! Got you! Hahahahaha! You should've seen the look on your face! Hahahahahaha!"
"Aarrrgghh!"
I love quality time.
Friday, April 23, 2004
Take note
I was dropping off my daughter, Alice, now a freshman in high school, at her soccer game. Getting out of the car, she stopped dead and said, "Shoot! John's here."
Since I knew she and her friend, John, had had a recent falling out, I asked her if it wasn't a good thing to see him today and tell him how she felt.
She gave me an exasperated look. "No, it's not a good thing, Mom. I wanted to talk to him on the phone. I don't want to talk to him right now because I don't have my notes with me."
Notes?
A few nights ago, she sat on my bed and, aware that my eyelids were at half-mast and falling fast, quickly recited her to-do list for the next morning. "I have to get up, go downstairs and put clothes in the dryer, take a shower..."
Here I interrupted, "Dad will put your clothes in the dryer tonight if you ask him."
She considers this and finds it acceptable. "Okay. I have to get up, go downstairs and get my clothes out of the dryer, take a shower, get dressed, dry my hair, pack my stuff, eat some breakfast -- I know you're tired, Mom, but I'm not going to talk long, I'm just going over my schedule right now for tomorrow morning -- and then get over to Bridgette's on time for once."
She looks at me every couple of seconds while ticking off points on her fingers to make sure that my eyes haven't slid sideways to the pages in my book. I'm not really having any trouble resisting the urge to read while she's talking because I've only just started this book and it hasn't gotten good, yet. Normally, I'd have to close the book to keep from irritating Alice but tonight it's more fun to leave it open, the pages a subtle threat in the competition for my attention, and see how many times I can make her check to see if I'm listening. Two, so far. She's getting pretty good.
Alice is proof that we're all individuals. If I hadn't been there I would swear that she emerged from another woman's womb. One lesson that I've learned as a parent: just because you and your spouse combined to create this person doesn't mean that this person is going to be anything like either of you. Although, come to think of it, Alice is a lot like my husband, Steve. Just not like me.
I've learned more about what my husband is like from watching Alice. He craves order and routine, like Alice. Schedules and having a plan B when plan A doesn't work out is how they operate. Funny how I can sympathize with my daughter's struggles to make sense out of chaos but I have no patience with my husband's same problems. I keep thinking that he ought to be over these petty difficulties by now and should just be more like me, more a live-life-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type person. I cut Alice more slack because I reason that she's relatively new to this living and learning stuff and it will take her longer to realize she ought to be more like me.
Alice is everyone's idea of the perfect daughter. She cleans her room three times a week. She mediates fights between her two younger brothers. She helps her friends' mothers when she visits someone else's home. Actually, I taught her that one.
"If you want to be invited to someone's house more than once, be especially nice to their mother. It doesn't matter whether the kid likes you or not. You might be that kid's best friend in the world, but if her mother doesn't like you, you'll never be invited back to her house again, ever."
Since about third grade, whenever I go to pick her up from this or that house and chance to speak with her friends' mothers, they all tell me the same thing. "Alice is such a nice girl. She helped me clean up after the party. I told her she didn't have to, but she insisted. She's wonderful!" I always nod and smile, guiltily suspecting that I've trained her to be everybody's favorite drudge.
So what am I hoping to train her to be? Well, I'd like her to be confident in who she is. It's hard not to criticize her efforts. Criticizing is my worst fault when it come to my children. The problem is that I want them to be perfect. Not like me.
I recently ordered a book that talks about how adolescent girls change as they grow to be women. They stop being outgoing and carefree and fun and devolve into opinionless, mindless, gutless nothings. I read this book and casually, I thought, asked Alice if she wasn't experiencing pressure to conform more to what's considered proper behavior in girls her age. She stared at me for a long moment before arching an eyebrow and asking me, "Have you been reading teenager books again?" Then she picked up the book from whence stemmed my concerns and started reading it herself. Now and again she'll point out some behavior of her friends' that she disagrees with and which is, coincidentally, outlined in the book. She's always triumphant about the fact that this book describes her friends and not her. I'm just happy one of us is reading it.
Alice is bright, funny and gifted. I marvel that she's my daughter. I somehow feel that I don't deserve to have her. I'm afraid that there will be a price to pay for all this delight, although I'll admit that there are times when this house is too small to hold two femmes on the rag at once.
Last Friday night, before the homecoming parade in which Alice was to take part, she experienced a major meltdown and dragged me, kicking and screaming, into her personal pit of despair. I resisted, of course, but it was futile.
In between clothes changes she cursed whoever had mislaid her favorite pin-striped men's suit (I didn't mislay it, I gave it to Goodwill), dissolved into tears once, begged for help twice and stared at me in disbelief when I suggested that it didn't matter what she wore because her friends would be happy to see her however she showed up. "No, they won't."
Eventually, after trying on nearly every article of clothing in three different closets, hers, mine and the boys', she finalized her costume for the parade -- a brown suit and fedora. I smeared a black mustache on her upper lip and then drove her two blocks to where the parade was supposed to start. She hesitated at the car door. "I can't see them!" referring to the freshmen float. I'd reached the end of my mothering rope. "Get out," I growled. She got. Later, when she came back home she hugged me and apologized for going off the deep end and I said I was sorry for losing my temper.
It's really pretty easy to get along with my daughter. I just have to be prepared to drop everything and listen to her when she's ready to talk to me. Usually, it's when I'm at my lowest ebb, say around 10:30 at night, or when I'm in the middle of a work crisis, juggling three clients at once. It's a kind of testing, I know. And no more than fair considering what I routinely put her though when she's reciting lists to me. My mother says I'm getting exactly what I deserve. Someone just like me.
Marie Marfia
© Copyright 2004
Since I knew she and her friend, John, had had a recent falling out, I asked her if it wasn't a good thing to see him today and tell him how she felt.
She gave me an exasperated look. "No, it's not a good thing, Mom. I wanted to talk to him on the phone. I don't want to talk to him right now because I don't have my notes with me."
Notes?
A few nights ago, she sat on my bed and, aware that my eyelids were at half-mast and falling fast, quickly recited her to-do list for the next morning. "I have to get up, go downstairs and put clothes in the dryer, take a shower..."
Here I interrupted, "Dad will put your clothes in the dryer tonight if you ask him."
She considers this and finds it acceptable. "Okay. I have to get up, go downstairs and get my clothes out of the dryer, take a shower, get dressed, dry my hair, pack my stuff, eat some breakfast -- I know you're tired, Mom, but I'm not going to talk long, I'm just going over my schedule right now for tomorrow morning -- and then get over to Bridgette's on time for once."
She looks at me every couple of seconds while ticking off points on her fingers to make sure that my eyes haven't slid sideways to the pages in my book. I'm not really having any trouble resisting the urge to read while she's talking because I've only just started this book and it hasn't gotten good, yet. Normally, I'd have to close the book to keep from irritating Alice but tonight it's more fun to leave it open, the pages a subtle threat in the competition for my attention, and see how many times I can make her check to see if I'm listening. Two, so far. She's getting pretty good.
Alice is proof that we're all individuals. If I hadn't been there I would swear that she emerged from another woman's womb. One lesson that I've learned as a parent: just because you and your spouse combined to create this person doesn't mean that this person is going to be anything like either of you. Although, come to think of it, Alice is a lot like my husband, Steve. Just not like me.
I've learned more about what my husband is like from watching Alice. He craves order and routine, like Alice. Schedules and having a plan B when plan A doesn't work out is how they operate. Funny how I can sympathize with my daughter's struggles to make sense out of chaos but I have no patience with my husband's same problems. I keep thinking that he ought to be over these petty difficulties by now and should just be more like me, more a live-life-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type person. I cut Alice more slack because I reason that she's relatively new to this living and learning stuff and it will take her longer to realize she ought to be more like me.
Alice is everyone's idea of the perfect daughter. She cleans her room three times a week. She mediates fights between her two younger brothers. She helps her friends' mothers when she visits someone else's home. Actually, I taught her that one.
"If you want to be invited to someone's house more than once, be especially nice to their mother. It doesn't matter whether the kid likes you or not. You might be that kid's best friend in the world, but if her mother doesn't like you, you'll never be invited back to her house again, ever."
Since about third grade, whenever I go to pick her up from this or that house and chance to speak with her friends' mothers, they all tell me the same thing. "Alice is such a nice girl. She helped me clean up after the party. I told her she didn't have to, but she insisted. She's wonderful!" I always nod and smile, guiltily suspecting that I've trained her to be everybody's favorite drudge.
So what am I hoping to train her to be? Well, I'd like her to be confident in who she is. It's hard not to criticize her efforts. Criticizing is my worst fault when it come to my children. The problem is that I want them to be perfect. Not like me.
I recently ordered a book that talks about how adolescent girls change as they grow to be women. They stop being outgoing and carefree and fun and devolve into opinionless, mindless, gutless nothings. I read this book and casually, I thought, asked Alice if she wasn't experiencing pressure to conform more to what's considered proper behavior in girls her age. She stared at me for a long moment before arching an eyebrow and asking me, "Have you been reading teenager books again?" Then she picked up the book from whence stemmed my concerns and started reading it herself. Now and again she'll point out some behavior of her friends' that she disagrees with and which is, coincidentally, outlined in the book. She's always triumphant about the fact that this book describes her friends and not her. I'm just happy one of us is reading it.
Alice is bright, funny and gifted. I marvel that she's my daughter. I somehow feel that I don't deserve to have her. I'm afraid that there will be a price to pay for all this delight, although I'll admit that there are times when this house is too small to hold two femmes on the rag at once.
Last Friday night, before the homecoming parade in which Alice was to take part, she experienced a major meltdown and dragged me, kicking and screaming, into her personal pit of despair. I resisted, of course, but it was futile.
In between clothes changes she cursed whoever had mislaid her favorite pin-striped men's suit (I didn't mislay it, I gave it to Goodwill), dissolved into tears once, begged for help twice and stared at me in disbelief when I suggested that it didn't matter what she wore because her friends would be happy to see her however she showed up. "No, they won't."
Eventually, after trying on nearly every article of clothing in three different closets, hers, mine and the boys', she finalized her costume for the parade -- a brown suit and fedora. I smeared a black mustache on her upper lip and then drove her two blocks to where the parade was supposed to start. She hesitated at the car door. "I can't see them!" referring to the freshmen float. I'd reached the end of my mothering rope. "Get out," I growled. She got. Later, when she came back home she hugged me and apologized for going off the deep end and I said I was sorry for losing my temper.
It's really pretty easy to get along with my daughter. I just have to be prepared to drop everything and listen to her when she's ready to talk to me. Usually, it's when I'm at my lowest ebb, say around 10:30 at night, or when I'm in the middle of a work crisis, juggling three clients at once. It's a kind of testing, I know. And no more than fair considering what I routinely put her though when she's reciting lists to me. My mother says I'm getting exactly what I deserve. Someone just like me.
Marie Marfia
© Copyright 2004
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