A Day Off

Friday, August 6, 1993 Laura is 9, Jasmine is 8, Margret is 6, Trina is 3, Lark is 11 months

Today is my day off. I indulged in sleeping in. I got up with Steve at 7, made a quick bathroom stop, got a drink, rotated the laundry, and nursed the baby. He gave Lark her madicine and soothed her back to sleep before leaving for his first appointment.



Several hours later I begin resurfacing to consciousness. Lark is awake. I pick her up to nurse her again and Margret joins us. She sings us each a song of her own spontaneous composition featuring our names and what we mean to her.

I put Lark down on the floor and begin reading a book I am enjoying (Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White). I am nearly finished and it was due two days ago so I want to finish before beginning the activities of the day. (I don't).

Pretty soon Margret returns, announcing she and Jasmine are going over to Nikki's to begin a club. I seize the moment to "teach responsibility" (e.g. get them to do their chores), so I ask...

"Is your bed made?"
"Yes."
"Are your dirty clothes in the laundry?"
"Yes."
"Is your floor completely picked up?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to inspect."

They scamper off. Delay tactic #1 works. They return.

"Have you eaten your breakfast?"

They scamper off. Delay tactic #2 works. They return.

"Is the living room picked up?"
Collective "groan".
"One of you stack all the flat objects and the other one pile everything else into a box."
By some miracle they negotiate these instructions quickly and without too much grumbling or fighting.

As they leave for Nikki's I suggest to Margret that she not take her purse. I notice she takes it.

Laying there reading in the quiet of the morning with only the muted sounds of cartoon watching downstairs my ears perk to the distinct sound of a dribbling faucet. Did someone turn on the outside tap? I set aside my book and get out of bed to step across the room and look out the window. I push aside the curtains and see only the glare of the morning sun as it filters through the screen of branches and leaves of the giant locust in front of our northeast facing room. Then I glance down at the floor in my room. There on our shag green carpet is little Trina, curled by our bed under a "blankie".

"Hmmm," I wonder. I nudge her a little with my foot. A darker wetter spot on my carpet is revealed. The mystery of the dribbling faucet sound is solved.

I get up and get Trina up and going. Trina wants "broken bread in a bowl sprinkled with pink milk powder and soaked with milk" for breakfast. I prefer a bowl of Life cereal topped with cornflakes. Lark gets some riced rice which is more a finger dexterity exercise than a meal for her. I thumb through a magazine over breakfast.

Lark is fussy so I take her back upstairs and nurse her while reading. Laura and Trina are playing at dressing up. Laura is sporting a wrist wrap of white mesh. Trina informs me, "It is for getting married."

I lose myself in my book but must resurface each time I hear Trina squal to determine if it's serious or not. Laura and Trina are having a shouting match. Trina comes crying to me, saying that "Laura is calling me names." Trina now has the white mesh and is wearing it as a veil. She tells me, "Laura is playing the game wrong."

I notice Lark has dozed so I again set aside my book to take a shower and dress. Trina shadows me. In the bathroom she announces, "your bottom jiggles." I think to myself, "Thanks a lot for shattering my illusion of youth and sveltness." She tries to make off with my deoderant because it is in a yellow container which for Trina means it must belong to her. I fear I will never find it again.

Laura has donned a wide-brimmed floppy red dress-up hat and an ankle length white skirt of gathered tiers, each tier marked by a strip of bias tape in the primary colors and green (a yard-sale find). Trina is in a patchwork Cinderella dress-up (which I actually made and wore in my high school days).

I am now, finally, dressed--wearing a yellow "beefy-t" and jeans, my hair pulled back and up. No make-up today. The wanderers have returned. They are all coloring, using Laura's markers (after some tips on negotiating from me). Lark is awake from a coughing fit. I will pick her up as I finish this.