Sandra Tayler

I have a wonderful neighbor. She and her family moved into the house behind ours last year. We quickly determined that taking a section of fence down was the only smart thing to do. I love being able to send Gleek and Patches out the back door to their friend’s house. I also love having a friend. I think it was just this time last year that I was wondering what it would be like to have a female friend to just hang out with. Now I know and I feel really really lucky. I’ve learned so much from J. She’s lived on a really tight budget for years and so frequently drops tidbits of info that I can imediatedly put to use. She is also incredibly considerate of everything and everybody. She’s even considerate of the feelings of the dog she unwillingly inherited from relatives. It is no surprise that J very quickly became the dog’s favorite person. I’m learning so much about how to be a good friend by just watching her. The home preschool group that has been so wonderful for Gleek would not have happened without J.

One thing I’m still learning from her is the wealth of free resources that are available in our community. I’ve lived here for 15 years now and yet J knows more about free concerts and lectures and museums than I do. She knows where to look to find this information. The really nice thing is how balanced our friendship is turning out to be. I balance the things I’m learning from her with my garage sale knowledge and my gardening knowledge. It feels good to give too.

The reason I’m singing the praises of my friend today is because in one stroke she resolved one of my fears for the coming summer. She gave me a family zoo/museum pass. With this pass I can get into 300 zoos and museums all across the country without having to pay an admissions fee. I was worried about this coming summer because money will be tight and we won’t be able to afford a big vacation trip. Now I can take my kids to the local zoo and museums as many times as I want all summer long. All year long in fact. And if we finagle a trip to Idaho we can do the same thing there. If there is some unlikely windfall that gets us all to my parents house in California there are a dozen zoos and museums we could go to. I’m really excited about having this pass.

My kids were watching a Dora The Explorer video this evening. Dora is one of those shows that encourages the audience to yell at the screen. “Where is my star?” asks Dora confusedly with the star sitting next to her foot “Can you tell me where it is?” Then she pauses to give kids a chance to yell at the screen before discovering that her star is in fact right there. My kids eat this up. They love it. They were happily watching and shouting through two episodes. Amusingly Kiki, who is 10, was the loudest shouter. Isn’t 10 the age when kids are supposed to decide this kind of show is stupid?

Then the shouting turned angry.
Kiki: “I got the wish!”
Gleek: “I got the wish!”
K: “No! I did!”
G: “No! I did!”
K: “Me!”
G: “Me!” It repeated with increased volume until I came up the stairs to play mediator. It turns out that at the end of the program Dora tossed a wish out for the audience to catch. My 10 year old and my 4 year old were arguing over who had caught this wish. I laughed and asked “Could you find something even sillier to argue about?” Kiki and Gleek grinned sheepishly. No, they didn’t think they could find anything sillier. Problem resolved I turned to head back downstairs.
G: “I caught the wish!”
K: “No I did!”
Hmm. Obviously the fight would continue unless I mediated further. Usually when there is contention over a toy and no clear rightful ownership, I confiscate the toy. So I marched up to Kiki and demanded that she hand over the wish. She reached into her pocket, pulled out an imaginary wish, and placed it into my hand. I repeated the process with Gleek. I then announced that the wishes were going to jail and they needed to find something else to play. I found that after carrying these wishes downstairs in my hand I had to throw them in the direction of the jail box before I could be done with them. How do kids make imaginary objects so real?

Later this evening Gleek put on her thinking cap to assist with her reading. This was a detailed process of setting the cap on her head, twisting something near her temple, and then tapping her temples with her index fingers while squinting her eyes. It was definitely a very thinking face. She gave me a long explanation that the twisting was what sorted her thoughts and lined them up. Then she could see what she needed. When we were done reading she carefully took off the cap and placed it on the shelf. “I just can’t sleep with it.” She informed me with a charming sideways tilt to her head as if this fact were obvious. I suppose not. No one wants to be too thinky when they’re trying to sleep.

Through the years we’ve had a pocket sized imaginary friend named Louie, a magic washing machine, a myriad of imaginary animals, and lost “hugs” that we needed to search all over the house to find. It might seem that finding a lost imaginary object would be easy, but no, the kids delight in making grown-ups search all over. They definitely see things that I don’t. I can remember doing that. I remember pretending so strongly that I could see/feel/hear everything I was pretending. Sometimes if I’m not paying attention I can still do it. I think that unselfconsciousness is the key. Or at least a key. Roleplaying provides a venue for this sort of thing as does acting. I don’t have much time for roleplaying or acting in adult forms. So I guess I’ll just stick to confiscation of contentious wishes.

I think I never love my children more than when they are sleeping. Oh, I love them when they are awake, but when they’re awake they need things. When they’re awake they squabble and make messes and get dirty. True they also sing and dance and laugh, but not always. I have moments when I look at one of the kids and marvel at this little being who has hijacked my life. They are always marvellous, but when they’re squabbling, or needy, or dirty I get too distracted to notice. When they are sleeping they need nothing from me. When they are sleeping they look so small and young and beautiful. When they are sleeping I am free to look for a few minutes and ponder the joy they bring. When they are sleeping I am free to just love them without distraction.

Today while Kiki and Link were at school, Gleek and Patches crashed into simultaneous naps. The house was blessedly peaceful. I ate lunch without interruption and took an uninterrupted 40 minute nap. And also I spent a few minutes gazing on my beautiful little dreamers.

This morning NotMyBaby’s dad called to say that he’d be staying home from work and NMB would be staying home with him. This meant that I had a morning gloriously free from babycare. I began by preparing for preschool tomorrow. I didn’t want to repeat the frantic post-bedtime preparations of Monday. Once that was done I began sorting our storage room. Cluttered is the natural state of all storage spaces. But when the clutter gets so bad I can’t get to things that I need, it is time to clean out. Our storage room reached that phase sometime last fall, but I’ve never gotten to it. It feels really good to sort through and pitch stuff. I’ve already got a donation box full and a garbage bag full. I’m not done yet.

One of the fun things about sorting a storage space is finding hidden treasures. I found an expensive and beautiful book that was loaned to Howard for a music project 10 years ago. This is probably the 5th time I’ve uncovered this book during a cleaning project. Each time I put it very carefully someplace so that we can return it, then it gets buried until I uncover it again. This morning I handed it to Howard, he made a phone call, and there is an appointment to return the book this evening. It’s nice to finally get that done.

I also found my portfolio of drawings. When I was about Kiki’s age I did a lot of drawing. I still had piles of it. I sorted through and it was like taking a tour of my 11 year old brain. I drew endless pictures of women, all with names. Fewer pictures of men because I didn’t like how they came out. There were lots of horses, and unicorns, and winged horses, and mermaids, and rainbows and dragons. There were also pictures that combined all of the above in various ways. Most of these pictures were illustrations for stories and worlds that lived in my head. Sometimes the stories got partially written, more often they didn’t. Some of the pictures were obvious dreck like the one where I’d gotten frustrated partway through creating a structure layer and scribbled all over it. Why did I keep that piece of paper for 20 years? I threw out the dreck, everything else I kept. All of it was immaturely rendered, but some of the concepts, shapes, and ideas have a power to them. I was captivated by some of those images. They made me want to draw again. I want to try again to make everyone else able to see the beautiful idea that is in my head. I will definitely be drawing from that wealth of imagination as I do more writing (and perhapse even drawing) in the future.

But not today. Today I need to finish the storage room.

I remember when those book orders that schools sent home actually had books. Oh the books are still there in boxed sets designed to be attractive to adults, but my kids never covet the books. My kids always want the “miniature dragon painting kit” or the “SECRET CODE door alarm” or the “Super Secret Diary Kit with Charm”. (These book order people really know the “hot” words for kids.) My kids want the overpriced kitch. I have continued to pay them allowances despite our tighter finances and what they do with their allowance is their choice, but I cringe whenever those book orders come home. All I can really do is force them to think it through before they plunk their money down. I make them sleep before deciding. Sometimes this causes them to forget the essential item completely. I try to remind them of the things they were planning to save money for. But if all my tactics don’t work, then I let them spend the money. They may regret it, but buyers remorse is an important learning experience and it is better to have it over something small and kitchy than over something large and expensive. Of course they frequently aren’t remorseful at all. In which case maybe the money they spent is worth it to them even though it seems a waste to me.

At 8pm last night I remembered that today it was my turn to host Gleek’s preschool group. I remembered it last week. I remembered it over the weekend. And then I forgot until 8 pm the night before. Fortunately I had the letter N and the number 2. Noah and his ark were a perfect fit. Kids love a chance to pretend to be animals. I scrounged a bag of noodles and some yarn, instant Noodle Necklaces project.

I managed preschool. I even managed it while juggling NotMyBaby and I-want-mommy Patches. Then I managed the afternoon which included two trips to pick up kids from school, three friends coming over, leaving, and coming back again multiple times, endless demands for snack food, dinner, and homework time.

I’m tired. I had stuff I wanted to write today. I felt in a writing mood, but there simply wasn’t space in my brain for words to coalesce. There definitely wasn’t time to sit in front of my computer. Well, until now when all the kids are abed and I’m too bone weary to write anything profound.

I need to sleep, but if I sleep then it will be tomorrow and I’ll have more things to do. maybe I’ll watch some Firefly.