(2 min read)
Within a few minutes of my daughters being back together in the same space after 2 weeks apart, every room in the house has earned a bit of dishevelment: the drapes awry, a scrunchie discarded on the floor, a lollipop licked once and left exposed on the bureau, the ruffled bedspread, throw pillows in a pile, a balled-up sweater in the corner…
All this resulting from a game of ‘samurai hide and seek’ inspired by the 2-foot plastic sword Evaline brought back from Japan.
The bags aren’t even all the way unpacked yet, the stories aren’t all the way told, but the fun is in full swing. And I have to join in, so I yank back the covers that I made that morning. I climb into the bathtub and knock over the neatly arranged shampoo bottles. I disrupt my nice vacuum lines in the rug and put a deep footprint in the freshly laundered and folded blankets, which tip and tumble as I search the room for 2 little Samurais.
We scream through the house slashing each other with anything longer than it is wide, and I, of course, let them take me down.
As I lay fallen on the dining room floor and they run off into the living room to see what they can hide behind next, I notice that a picture has been made crooked by the swinging door and every single chair in the dining room has been pulled out of from the table. As I get up, I step in something wet.
Tis’ true. With kids, you can’t have nice things. Or, at least, you can’t keep your nice things nice.
But you do get something back in the trade.