Wordy Wednesday: Loud Weeping Endures a Long Time

Baby Elspeth has a loud summer cold. She has been wandering around banging into things and weeping and then rising up to play and then hurting herself and then shouting, “My Nose Are Yucky!” If you don't immediately stop and produce a Kleenex she comes all the way apart at the seams. The others seem unaffected, for now.

Elphine is fussing and plotting over her birthday and her future. She came to me last night and listed the things she can do–the kitchen, the laundry, making dinner, making breakfast, and so on and so forth–and then said, “So it won't be long before I can get an apartment and a job.” What sweet music to my tender motherly ear. Being a goal oriented person, of course it makes sense that she has assembled for herself a certain number of tasks that she is ticking off quietly and perseveringly. What a change, though, from two years ago when we told her that she would not always want to live with us, that when people grow, sometimes they like to settle as far away from their parents as they reasonably can, and she sat down and wept.

Alouicious just stared at her, last night, like she was an alien. When she spun away “to scrub out the laundry sink in case we need to hand wash clothes” he enumerated a list of ways all those around him were at that moment failing him–Gladys was singing 'Let it go' and getting on his nerves, Romulus wasn't sweeping the floor, he was just standing there, leaning on the broom, talking about minecraft, and the babies were trying to bring their bikes into the house from the garage.

“And you, what are you doing?” I asked, after his lengthy report.

“I'm doing the kitchen,” he said.

“Really? It sounds to me like you're standing here tattling while the kitchen stands filthy.” He sniffed and shuffled disconsolately away.

In the half an hour after dinner before we gave up and went to bed, Matt and I tried and tried to discover how the day had been. We would say, in between yells and boasting and tattling, or try to start to say, “how was your day?” But we never got farther than “your”.

“Let's just go to bed,” I shouted.

“Ok,” he mouthed back, too tired to produce sound.

Marigold, having finally given up on the bike, climbed on the coffee table and announced, loudly, “When the tomato comes, it will blow the house away and we will die!”

“She means tornado,” Romulus announced, condescendingly, mushing the dust laden broom into the rug, so that no part of the dirt in the broom would escape remaining in the living room.

The baby, who, again, is so not a baby at all, flopped down on the floor and sobbed, “Are we living in we house?”

Yes, you poor sick child. We are living in we house. And if anyone comes in and tries to tell her her its not 'we' but 'our', I will also sit down and weep. But on some other day, because there's only so much noise that can be made before a full measure has been filled up.