Lights on, don’t know what time it is. “I peed my bed” says Jack. For a minute I suggest he sleeps in our bed for the rest of the night. We both think thats a bad idea. I get up, take off the peed sheets, blankets, and pillow, remake his bed and go back to sleep. Sore throat keeps me in bed longer than usual. I hear laughing and screaming, it sounds like it’s coming from outside. Pry myself from under the covers. What are they doing? Go upstairs, cold air rushing in, patio covered in white. Jack and Fiona naked, freezing. Alan yells, how bad what they’ve done is. The whole carton of new milk empty, splattered all over, whip cream container, six yogurt drinks all empty. Take Fiona and Jack in, put them in a warm bath. “I put milk on my body, mommy, we poured it on our whole bodies, our butts, my penis” Jack says. “On my butt and on my vagina” Fiona says. “Will Daddy still be mad?” Fiona asks. “What you did was very bad” I say. I dress them and we go upstairs and have breakfast. We might need to put a lock on the fridge. Alan says we don’t need to have candy in the house, they don’t need it to survive and they do this sorta shit when they’re spoiled. It all started with a game, Pie Face they got for Christmas. I may have put the idea in their head yesterday about a food fight. We were talking about pie face and I said I was going to get them each a can of whip cream and they could have a whip cream fight. They loved the idea. I think its my fault they got into the fridge this morning and had a food fight.
Category: cultivating patience
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This is the deal, right here. Black and white, legs stretched out wide, she’s a beautiful dog. Content because I took her for a walk. Making GREAT headway on my book, Nap Time Paintings. In fact, I have learned more the way that things have gone than if they had gone how I imagined they would. I figured I was paying the publishing company to layout my writings and illustrations beautifully. Tt would look fantastic. I found out, Artistically I am required to make all the decisions if I want it to look good, how I imagine it looking. Mind Blowing. You learn something new every day. I want to paint now. I have an hour. I also want to take my paintings to the frame shop. My new Book, School Time Paintings By Jenny Hynes. Catch ya on the rebound.
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The space in between. In between two paper turkeys that hang on the wall from over a year ago. Above the kitchen table, many meals shared. The crows cawing loud today. What are you cawing about crow? September heat rot summer figs. Dried dark purple corpses, tears down the middle, reminiscence of pink and yellow juicy insides. The leaves on the fig tree so large now, they canopy the sand box, crisp dried fig leaves crunch under my feet. I walk to my green chair I put in the corner at the beginning of summer. I sit down, it’s cool here, the coolest place around. I wonder if I should put away the trucks for the winter? Will they deteriorate if I leave them out in the rain and wind? Should I put up new paper turkeys? These are baby paper turkeys, just dollops of paint, glue, brown and orange construction paper, and googly eyes. Jack and Fiona are three and a half now. Their Thanksgiving decorations this year will be more sophisticated. A few little baby paintings are still taped on the wall. Fiona is drawing “The Green Faced Man” now. Jack rode a scooter down the sidewalk this morning to school and stopped at all the driveways. Time that passes between is a growing time, a learning time. It’s hard to let it go, of the past three years, the baby phase. It slipped through my hands like sand in the sand box. The narrative was set, predetermined. The baby is born dependent on the caregivers, the child learns to be interdependent and become caregivers themselves. I never think about the time they spend away, in their communities without me. I think of them as they are with me. Fiona started helping a younger child we were with yesterday in a very mature way. I can only imagine she is a caring person on the outside. Jack likes talking to everyone. He looks older than he is and speaks clearly. He looks at people’s eyes when having a conversation. What’s happened in between the spaces here- two babies have grown into confident, individual children. Maybe it’s time for new paper turkeys.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 