Messy

Krista has the flu and she has an awful temperature; her hair is springing up and out, and the curls are boinging in a million spirals all over her head. Her eyes are half closed and red. It is 2 a.m. and she flops on my waterbed making me flip up several inches off the bed as she hits bottom. "I'm sick, what do I dooooo?" she whines.I'm infuriated because she's woken me up, I have bad breath, and I'm achy."Well I'm sick too!" I whine back. "I'm sicker than you. I'm so sick I think I'll die. I'm way sicker than anyone, anywhere, anytime."I am, in fact, not sick."Mom, what do I do?"She is desperate for attention, love, comfort, a cure."How the hell am I supposed to know? What am I Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc, Madame Curie?" I say. This is my idea of maternal comfort."Mommmmeeeee."Krista's intensity is growing, and I get that I'm too little for all of this feeling. Further, I'm freaked out at my lack of caring and nurturing. I always feel bad, tired, and awful, especially in the morning. My back aches; I work too hard; I sleep wrong, have bad dreams; my eyes are running, hurting and crusty from residual mascara. I've already nursed a thousand of her natural shocks. Am I not yet done? When does this mothering thing end? When do they leave? How long do I have to keep up this facade of sanity? "Go take some Advil and lay back in bed," I say. But I am thinking, What are you retarded that I have to tell you that? It's not cancer for God's sake. Come to me when you have a brain tumor then we'll talk.She's crying now and I feel bad, but then I am relieved that she's left the room. What does one do when one is finished being a Mom, yet the children are still preteens?What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?HamletShe stays home from school all day and is feeling better. "Krista honey," I say as I am going out to my studio to work, "please don't watch TV in my room and make sure you eat only in the kitchen. Oh and don't eat the lasagna, that is for dinner.""Okay Mom, I love you," Krista says subserviently.After working for several hours cutting velvet, answering calls, boxing dresses, I go in the house for a snack and to work on the computer in my room. I enter the house from the back yard where my studio is, and I am in work mode. I'm hustling, juggling, staying on task, getting to all my customers, and meeting my goals. Yet something jars me from my working obsession. Something grabs me from the corner of my eye, something in the kitchen. I notice red on the gray cupboards; however, I rush by undeterred. I walk through the living room and hear the television. Loud. It is coming from my room. My blood pressure is elevating slightly, but I am staying on task. There is an odd reddish glare from under my bedroom door; I brave on and thrust through the door. As I burst into my room, my body's momentum crashes through my stomach. I stop dead. My eyes pop straight forward; my shoulders tense to my earrings. There, on the bed, is Krista watching cartoons with the entire tray of lasagna sitting on my bureau completely eaten. There is red lasagna sauce dripping from the tray onto the dresser, on the wood floor, and seeping into the cracks between the wooden slats. It is on my blue jacquard bedspread that I bought to impress the gang of men I'd hoped to lure to my room when I was first single, on the sheets, pillows and all over Krista's shirt, hands, hair and eyelashes."What in the hell!" I screech hysterically while tearing at my hair."What in the hell!"Emphasis changing from the to hell. I go back into the kitchen to assess the damage and to purposely further my madness, to increase my blood pressure and insane rage at Krista. I go in the kitchen because I love to be stark, raving mad at Krista. There are three spatulas with sauce and cheese stuck to them; one on the floor, one in the microwave, one on the stove. There is cheese, sauce, and meat strewn on the floor, sink, refrigerator door handle, on and in the microwave. Krista recklessly follows me into the kitchen. I look at her with my mouth trembling, tears forming in my eyes. There is red sauce on her pants, and at first I think she has started her period. I can't figure out how she managed to get blood on her eyelashes. Then I know it is lasagna."What kind of abortion is going on here?!" I yell."Mom, settle down. This can't be good for your heart. Don't forget how old you are," she says."Clean," I say grinding my front teeth to sand. "Just clean."She does clean, but she reddens all of the dish towels, tosses the lasagna trays and dripping paper towels into the trash, splattering more red on the clean cupboards behind the trash can. She flicks lasagna noodles off my bed and onto the floor and walls, and tracks lasagna meat sauce from the bedroom to the kitchen while carrying dripping dish and fork. When she has finished cleaning, I have new and different problems. I have to get a ladder to reach the tall, stained walls, mop the hall floors and launder all the dirty towels. And I have to cook chicken and potatoes since Krista has ingested our entire dinner.Later I tell Luke, my then boyfriend, about this and he has advice, "Well, why don't you.....have you tried....I would have....you oughtta....""Oh fuck off," I shout like a Tourette syndrome sufferer.Three days pass."Krista, I'm going out to work," I say as Krista passes me with a one gallon Tupperware bowl of Cheerios. "and do NOT eat those Cheerios in your room."She sits down at the kitchen table obediently, obsequiously, sycophantically. I go out to my studio to work, and when I come back in for a snack and to work on the computer in my room, I notice, happily and joyfully, that she has not left a Cheerios mess in the kitchen. I am relieved but misinformed. I walk into the hall, and a whitish light is glaring from under her bedroom door. Slowly I open the door. What I see next makes the blood retreat from my upper half, and I feel instantly faint. There are Cheerios and milk everywhere. There is milk dripping from Brook's top bunk bed; there are soggy Cheerios on the floor, all over her bed, the blankets, and the towels on her bed that she had used to clean up (or cover up) earlier messes. There is milk dripping and soaking her dirty clothes on the ground, and all over the $23.00 Media Map I bought for her classroom with the pictures of Grizzlies in Yosemite, the Needle in Seattle, the Statue of Liberty in New York, topographical pictures of the Grand Canyon and the Mississippi River. I bought this map to prove that I am a caring, involved, interested, highly educated Mom who invests in her child's education and welfare; to prove that I matter, I am good and great as a parent and a person; to show that I am smart, involved, cool, neat. Now the Media Map sits drenched in milk, useless to her class and my ego. Krista says, "I came in here to eat (even though you told me not to), and I tripped over the Media Map, then Cheerios went flying, milk went splashing everywhere, it got all over everything."Krista's room is usually piled about two feet high with dirty clothes, dishes, food, and crap in general so that the milk was splashed onto everything on that floor. It was seeping down into the depths. Krista once cut her finger and showed it to me."What happened?" I asked."I cut it on my floor," Krista answered. "I tried to pick something up off the floor and cut myself on that dumb glass chess board that is broken and in sharp pieces on my floor. I taped a big piece of that glass to my wall for symbolism and as a cautious reminder next time I want something down there."This milky mess w"as serious in a room so cluttered."Clean this fucking shit up," I scream. "If I see one. One. One fucking Cheerio, one happy, little tan circle, I will burst and you will no longer have a mother. I will flat out explode and combust before your eyes, and you will forever be alone. Alone! Do you hear me...alone!"Krista grabs a dirty sock off the ground with her toes and starts spreading Cheerios and milk around with her foot and the sock. I can’t even think of the name of the article of clothing. It isn't even a sock but a sockette, a footie, a shortie, a bootie. Why would she want, when I am so enraged, on top of everything else, to get her socks milky? Is this her idea of getting me back?"Mom, I am using the sock to clean up the mess," she replies.I am dumb-founded. I did not know, had not heard of this cleaning technique, and I am frankly and completely confounded. My good friend Stacy once called her husband Retarded Boy because he would never remember to put the lids on the trash cans, and the crows would abuse the trash every week no matter how often she reminded him. Krista is smart and clever. I believe this. She astounds me with her intellect regularly. That is why I am even more astounded by this imbecilic behavior. She is Retarded Girl."What are you an imbecile? Are you a retard? Who cleans up milk and Cheerios with a dirty sock? Dammit you will do this correctly and properly! Dammit you will not clean this up with a fucking bootie," I vainly try to terrorize her. I have experience with milk and carpet, summer heat and smell. Krista had spilled (poured) an entire gallon of milk on our old brown carpet when she was two. Spoiled milk that you can't get out of brown carpet in the summer is nauseating."I'll clean it up. I'll clean it up Mom just go out and stop freaking," she says."You'll do it wrong. You always do, you do everything wrong!" I yell.And she did. For weeks I would find crunchy, shriveled O's: in the bathroom, in my room, in the hall, and halfway under the baseboards, their little cheeks peaking out. When I shook out her sleeping bag a week later, twenty Cheerios went flying all over. And yes, the spoiled milk smell lasted a couple of months until we could pinpoint the area beneath months of dirty clothes, paper, glitter, CD's, dirty socks, barrettes and brushes.

Krista was four inches taller than me, had long, super curly, black hair with blond streaks. The streaks used to be bright pink but faded to a pretty blond color. Krista had begged me for pink or purple streaks for a year.
"Why not blond or light brown streaks? Pink is not a hair color," I said.
"That is why I want pink, cha," Krista answered.
I wanted pretty. She wanted bold. She wanted a difference.
"What's the big deal?" Luke my then boyfriend asked when I told him what she wanted. "It's only hair, not drugs."
My rules were: No drugs, no smoking, no cigarettes, no sex, anything short of the was allowed. If a teen was not doing drugs, smoking, drinking, or having sex, that in itself was an achievement, especially if they were also getting good grades-which Krista at the time was. Teens are going to do weird things and their abnormalities are the norm. But when I came to the above conclusions, I didn't think about her riding in cars with boys, laying down in the middle of the road, getting in trash cans at school, lighting fires or staying up all night and being a bitch all the next day. And I did not think about purple and pink streaks in the hair. Luke had a point though, pink hair wasn't drugs. Teens need room for important growth, and it is important to be tolerant. Before I had teenagers, I had glib ideas about the importance of independence, self expression, and experimentation with life as the child grew into an adult. Now these ideas are being tested. The best parents with the best ideas and solutions are those with no children. The same could be said about the stages of childhood. The best parent to a teen is a person who has a toddler. For me to have said that I knew what raising a teen would be like before I had one was like someone saying they knew what working construction in the summer sun was like because they had sat drinking margaritas by the pool in the sun at a Country Club. Finally I agreed to the streaks.
"Suzie it'll be $110 for me to streak her hair and don't try it yourself then come to me to fix it," my hairdresser said when I told him about Krista's plan to color her hair pink.
Krista thought she should have it professionally colored.
"Hell no I'm not spending over a hundred dollars on your hair," I said.
Luke chimed in, "I'll do it. I used to color all of my friends' hair. My Mom was a hairdresser. I know what I am doing."
Krista was ecstatic and now I had no way out. Luke and Krista bought dark, hot pink hair color, bleach, hair paint brushes, tin foil, and rubber gloves. Luke colored her hair in the kitchen while I nervously cleaned the top of the fridge. Luke layered the hair and separated sections with tin foil. He painted on the bleach, waited, rinsed, and then did the same with the pink hair color. It turned out beautifully. I loved it and so did she. She had a gorgeous pink streak around her cherubic face and huge pink chunks in back.
"My Mom's young boyfriend streaked my hair pink. My Mom rocks. Luke rocks, cha," Krista told her friends.
She, in pubescent rebellion, wore long controversial band t-shirts, rolled up jeans with holes, aboriginal pen markings on her skin, and multi-colored socks. At the shoe store I bought her high top black leather Converse with gun-metal grommets, stylized batwings and sporty designed bottoms. I wear Birkenstocks. In case you have been billeted on Pluto for the past couple of decades, Birkenstocks are corky based, buckled, leather, open-toed sandals that are worn and designed specifically for the middle-aged, health and socially conscious liberal. The Birkenstock to a teenager is what the geriatric diaper is to the middle-aged person: iconic of everything old. Although she had long ago badgered me into updating my wardrobe to low-rise jeans and super long t-shirts, she had failed to embarrass me into giving up my Birkenstocks.
To get me out of my old outdated jeans she said, "Mom, you have long crotch and baggy bottom. If your pant waist were any higher you'd have a bra strap."
My cousin chimed in and said, "My what a long crotch you have."
But the Birkenstocks went unnoticed, or at least ignored, by Krista.
Then one day Krista said, "Mom Birkenstocks are way Old School; you are beyond vintage."
"Luke likes them," I pleaded.
"He's just being nice," she said dryly.
"No he was with me when I bought them, and he wouldn't have encouraged me to spend hundreds on shoes if he weren't sincere."
"Yes but did he know you'd wear them with socks?"
She had me there. I had my own doubts about the Birkenstock/sock combo. It had been a thing I had not wanted to admit to myself. I had been in fashion denial for some time. Sock and Birkenstock wearing forty-one year old women are not attractive. I may as well put those damn grown-up diapers on my feet and shout to the world, "I never want to get laid."
I have chunky, blond streaks in my hair and wear plenty of make-up to cover many of my aging imperfections. I have big boobs dammit. But allow your eyes to relax and travel downwards inch by inch and prepare for the horror and doom of the worst kind: Middle Aged Beauty Neglect.
"Claire, don't let the children look, but that woman over there is wearing Birkenstocks with socks," strangers said.
Middle-Age Beauty Neglect ruins minds, has destroyed sex lives, torn apart marriages, and driven sensible men to affairs. People get it bad when they are married. Mrs. Garter is my age, a mother of Brook's friend, and balding. In case you were dozing while reading, I said, Mrs. Garter is balding. And she is allowing it. There are plugs, drugs and wigs, but she is allowing Female Balding to take root. Male balding is okay; men can shave their head and it is expected, but female balding is worse than ovarian cancer. Mrs. Garter has terrible yellow stained teeth, is overweight, and wears no make up. Her husband is a very tall, ugly professor who studies environmental pollution. The Garter's have enough money for plastic surgery, teeth bleach and Covergirl. Mrs. Garter's husband is irreparably geeky, and it is not that polyester wearing, slump-backed, buck-tooth men aren't attractive, it is that that is the best man you'll get if you have Beauty Neglect. When I thought of Luke and compared him to Mrs. Baldy's husband, I realized I will do anything to keep from falling into that dark, deep abyss. So thanks to Krista, I bought blue Converse shoes and wear them faithfully. When I first got low-rise jeans, my fat stomach hung out because my t-shirts were too short. My gut was white and mushy; it folded out and over the top of my pants in the same manner that Mrs. Garter's teeth cantilevered out over her bottom teeth.
"Longer t-shirts Mom. That's gross," Krista said grimacing while trying to unglue her eyes from my belly.
"Longer t-shirts it is," I said.
The Abercrombie Kendall tank top worked lovely, but since the low-rise pants held tight to the hips and squished my fat up and over the waistband and there was nothing around the waist to hold the fat in, the belly looked even puffier than it already was. The shape of my belly button, a remakably deep cavern, was further delineated by the bulging fat surrounding it. My belly was a doughnut and the belly button was the doughnut hole. For months I went to the grocery store, my morning tea cafe, and Luke's house wearing the low jeans and tight, thin t-shirts with doughnut belly before realizing I needed a girdle. Twenty-four year old, low-rise jean wearing girls (for whom this style is meant), do not need a girdle. But when one is forty-one years old and wearing teenager clothing, one must adapt. The first girdle was heavily boned and had thirty-five tiny hooks to strap the fat down. It was much like a corset. It was beautiful. I looked great. It went from just under my boobs down to my hips, way past aforementioned belly button. No cavern showing through; no fat lapping over the edge. I proudly wore it to the mall. It was super tight and I felt sick in the car on the way there.
"Mom once you are standing it will be fine," Krista said and I believed.
We walked around the mall with my shirt getting tucked in at the top of the girdle. The belly button was hidden, but the boning showed through my thin shirt, and people stared. The girdle rode up. It rode down. I couldn't breathe and almost passed out six times until I unhooked the top hooks and found relief. I wanted to rip it off but was too vain--now that I looked so good--to go back to how things once were. Once home I took that fucking girdle off and relaxed my traumatized, soft belly. I decided to can that damn $45 girdle, and bought a body suit designed to gently hold in all the mush. It was made from tight, thick lycra fabric. It worked great except for the three hooks at the crotch that poked and pinched. Aside from making it difficult to pee, it was uncomfortable and it left imprinted indentations on my important parts. But I will wear it just so I can look hot. That is, as hot as a forty-one year old, middle-aged woman with a muffin top belly trying to dress like a skinny twenty-one year old girl can get.

Filth

Krista has the stomach flu. She moans and rolls around pathetically, wears loose, scroungy clothes and repetitively asks, "What do I do, it's awful, I can't stand it."
"Oh my God you are pathetic," I wail.
"I know I'm grossing myself out," Krista says.
I have no sympathy of course, she is always SO sick. She is terribly unhealthy and has the worst stomach ache, headache, toothache, backache all the time. Especially when it is time for school, or when it is her turn to do dishes.
"I don't friggin' care you are going to friggin' school dammit. Dammit!" I say.
I hate it when she is home from school. She made a smoothie in the blender last time she was off school and I should have known better than to buy the dark frozen berries because when I encountered the kitchen hours after her graceful attendance, the dark frozen berries proved to have been a mistake. It was obvious that she had made a smoothie with the dark berries but how she made it was yet to be discovered. By the look of things she took the crunchy icy berry chunks in her teeth and jaws and shook her head viciously from left to right while gnashing her teeth. With berry spewing through gaps in her lips she must have pirouetted and tumbled up and down the kitchen floor for several minutes possibly jumping up onto chairs and table for what else could explain the red blotches and drizzles on the ceiling, the tops of the walls and cupboards and strategically dripping down my new and elegant yet casual velvet (yes unwashable, dry clean only velvet) curtains. It is not that the red frozen berries when blended created the darkest, richest deepest drippiest hue I've ever seen, its just that aside from fresh pints of maroon blood spattered on a very stark white background, I can't think of any. The center of the 14” tile stone flooring (that I love and was the key selling point on this house) was relatively clean, using the term loosely. But the edges of the kitchen, under the cupboards near the walls, were splattered, and mind you the usage of the word splattered in this context is the quintessentially proper usage of it, with reddish-maroon, wine-colored, deathly dark smoothie. It was dripping in gruesome angry globules from the cupboards low and high. The tile countertops no longer gleamed in long stretches of ivory but instead were polluted with abortion-like fetus parts. I tell you the red goo was all the way in the dining room, on the glass slider and even residually on the living room couch. It is not that fresh smoothie is terribly difficult to wipe up in such massive quantities and in such far-reaching arrays, tedious and time-consuming yes, but terribly difficult-no. However, red, berry smoothie is in fact quite difficult when left to dry and harden on a hot California summer day when of course is the time that one might choose to spew blended dark fruit pieces about ones mother's new and spotless kitchen.
"Krista get down here dammit!" I am a raving lunatic.
She came down immediately which translates that she knew she had something coming.
"What in the hell. What in the hell is going on in here? Dammit!" I screech.
"Mom calm down. Deep breaths...come on do them with me. Here we go, in (pause) now out," she is funny even when I want to destroy her.
"Deep breathe my fucking ass. What have you done to my antiseptic and sterile white with stone tiled floor and ivory tile counter-topped kitchen?" I am hyperventilating but my eyeballs haven't rolled completely out of my head.
"Mom, Mom, Mom, settle down. I was making a smoothie and all was well, I took the blender pitcher from the counter to the table and then tripped and dropped the pitcher. Smoothie went everywhere I tell you. I worked on cleaning it up already for a really long time because I knew you would be mad," she grovels appropriately.
I do believe that she tried to clean it up because of that center swiped quasi-cleanliness on the stone-tiles. But she is so sycophantically accommodating that I know I'm being manipulated. Some people know how, what and even when to clean. (I will address the important relationship between timing and cleaning later). Some do not. Sadly, Krista is among those of the latter specimens. One day for instance I asked her to clean up her tuna lunch mess.
"I already did," was her earnest reply.
"No you didn't there is still a mess everywhere," I say patiently.
Standing right next to me, looking at the same exact kitchen from the same exact physical perspective, she incredulously says, "Where?"
"Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere," I am calm, I am nurtured, I am loved. I tell myself.
"Okay, okay Mom you are anal," Krista says.
"If you can smell rotting fishy, dead tuna meat then you haven't cleaned properly," I say.
"Mom I smell nothing," she means it. "Mom I see nothing," she is serious. I swear that this is the exact conversation we shared. The girl doesn't smell, know, feel or intuit dirt which is partially what separates the clean from the not clean. Laziness takes care of the rest. I pointed out to her the odorous piles of tuna and tuna juice, various crumbs, utensils, remnants on leather place-mats and on mahogany kitchen table. She picked up the can and dripped tuna juice across the counter-top and floor then threw the can away but on top of the closed lidded trash can. Did a half-ass swirl of a rinse on the dish and stuck it sideways next to the previously soldierly and perfectly arranged dishes in the dishwasher, left the fork with dead and decaying tuna guts dripping from tines inside the microwave where she had warmed up a french roll, dragged a dish cloth over the counter in such a way as to spread crumbs and tuna guts more evenly over the counter, tossed the wet, dripping, tuna soaked rag onto the once gleaming stainless steel faucet, then skipped across the tuna juice trail on the floor and transferred it from the soles of her feet and dragging, tattered bell bottom jeans into the living room so that the lonely carpet didn't feel neglected of oceanic creatures. But back to berries. Krista spent more time cleaning while I pointed out globs and gobs that somehow escaped her vision. I goaded and inspired her to continue with encouraging aphorisms.
"You are such a slob, finish this. What am I your friggin' slave. You work until it is done. Oh wouldn't I like to be done with my work so I could sit on my lazy butt and watch TV like you do all friggin' day."
There remains smoothie on the ceiling and velvet curtains even as I sit at my computer today. It is a reminder of the imperfections that family life unexpectedly brings, a reminder of pre-familial and unattainable standards of perfection and cleanliness crippled by the dull ache of reality. Dare we hope for a time of perfection and antiseptic cleanliness when the children are grown? An environment void of all dripping berry juice, tuna globs, happy soggy Cheerios, crashed computers and dirty toilets? A time void of human imperfections? Void of those who make messes, don't clean right and create high blood pressure in their mothers? A time void of daughters, disappointments, ruined expectations, disturbing mothering traits and long looks at inner ugly self? Void of me as mother? Dare I hope? Yes often, guiltily, lustily I hope for a time alone. All alone. Adrift and single. Void and alone, simply all by my clean antiseptic self. Alone. Solitaire. I reiterate void. Void of Krista. Void of Brook. Well when you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so good so nevermind. I will tolerate the filth.