Household flame-jumper

This morning I felt like a domestic flame-jumper. All around me were little metaphorical household fires to be put out: I moved from one to the other, quenching them methodically, as the kids watched and my husband slept late, having been up late last night studying for an exam.

I overslept by five luxurious minutes, then sat down at my computer to write my prescribed 1,000 daily words for the practice Julia Cameron calls Morning Pages. Done with that, I moved last night’s clean laundry into the dryer, because the previous morning both the kids had had wardrobe crises, not able to find anything they wanted to wear, so I wanted to be sure they had an array of clean clothes to choose from today. Then I let the dog out, retrieved the newspaper, and hopped onto the stationary bike for 45 minutes of aerobic exercise. Food for the guinea pig’s bowl, then off to wake up both kids (I’ve learned that the trick with Tim is to turn his bedside lamp on when I wake him; that keeps him from going back to sleep) and down to toast bagels for them.

They were bringing soup for their school lunches, so I fetched the pot of corn chowder I made last night from the fridge and put it on the burner to heat before I poured it into their Thermoses. Out with the dog again, and since she has a vet appointment this afternoon, I needed to follow her with a plastic bag (the one from the morning newspaper) to fetch a sample. Back inside and washing my hands ferociously, I called the kids to breakfast for a second time, then checked the dryer. The clothes weren’t dry, and Tim needed to be out the door in fifteen minutes, so I removed all the laundry except his sweat pants and shirt and put just those two items in for a quick five-minute drying cycle. (Apologies for the energy inefficiency.) Back downstairs, both kids were finishing their breakfasts. Tim, who leaves first, finished up and collected his things: backpack, lunch, water bottle, trumpet, music folder.

Holly, still chewing on her bagel, suddenly let out a little squeal, clambered down from her stool and went racing upstairs. With the kind of split-second action that makes me marvel at how brain synapses work, I recognized what had happened: eating her bagel, she had remembered that she lost a tooth yesterday at school, an event made particularly notable by the fact that while showing me the tooth in the car on the way home, she dropped it into the dark recesses between the console and the passenger’s seat. Once we got home, I found a flashlight for her and she spent a half-hour searching for it, but it was just like the scene in Robert McCloskey’s One Morning in Maine, except that instead of a tooth looking like a grain of sand on the beach and vice versa, Holly was hampered by the fact that she was searching for a tiny tooth in the accumulation of lint, driveway grit and crushed popcorn on the floor of the car – everything looked like a tooth, but nothing was.

I had assured her the tooth fairy would come anyway, and it was that recollection that had caused her to drop her bagel and race up the stairs. But I was at a meeting last night that lasted until 9:30, and got home exhausted. Only when Holly raced up the stairs did I realize the tooth fairy had not in fact come as promised.

Holly reappeared, looking crestfallen. “I knew I should have written a note,” she said. Then her face cleared. “Unless maybe…the tooth fairy left something for me in the car? Since that’s where the tooth is?”

“Maybe!” I exclaimed. “Put on your shoes and you can go out to the garage and check!”

Fortunately, my shoes were already on. While Holly searched for hers in the coat closet, I furtively grabbed a dollar bill from my purse and dashed out to the car and made it back into the house just as Holly was ready to head out.

She returned in moments, dollar bill in hand, beaming. “Good thinking, Holly!” I cheered. “Good hustle, Mom!” Tim whispered with an all-knowing smirk.

Score another point for the flame jumper. Tim was ready to head out to the bus; I kissed him goodbye and put on my barn coveralls to go feed the cows and let out the sheep. No problems there at all; they were happy to see me and waited patiently for their hay bales. The dog ran cheerfully by my side. All was peaceful in the barnyard.

After that, the morning was easy: run Holly’s bath, help her find clean dry clothes to wear, send her on out to the bus with backpack, lunch, and form saying what we can contribute to the class holiday toy drive.

All fires out, everyone organized and packed off, it was time to make myself a mug of coffee, sweep the sesame seeds off the kitchen floor, and get to work. “Work” meaning sitting at my desk writing and editing. Which after that kind of morning really doesn’t seem like work at all; it seems like rest.

Still, nothing that I’d done that morning, not even collecting the sample to bring to the vet, felt onerous. I’ve read that Quakers consider housework a form of prayer; they see cleaning and tidying as a spiritual as well as a practical act. Similarly, doing all the tasks that comprised my jigsaw-puzzle morning felt like I was putting into practice the things I’m grateful for: healthy children heading off happily to school, a dog whose presence improves our quality of life, good food for breakfast and lunch, animals whose needs are so easily met.

And as for the tooth fairy. Yes, that too is something I feel gratitude for: the trusting and confident fantasy life of children, and how much fun it is to be an agent of fairy tales for these few short years that they matter.