Wednesday, July 8, 2009

On Nothing

Why is it that the memories I would most like to preserve in some sort of hologram for future virtual visitations, are the least interesting to share with others?

It's on odd thing.

"What are you up to?" They ask me.

"Oh, nothing," is all I can answer.


It is part of the torment of a stay at home mother. I can't offer work anecdotes or a list of aggravating and vaguely impressive deadlines. I am, perhaps, overly sensitive to the glazed eyes I receive when I offer the most abbreviated highlights of my actual life.

My husband assures me that details of his actuarial profession send people into a coma before he concludes the most basic definition of his job, so it is not just me.

Pity, though.

Encapsulated in my lightly-delivered response to the what are you up to question, bear with me eye glazers, is the gilded age of parenthood.

Nothing.

The nothing of over-filling a guppy pool with biodegradable dish soap, tossing in a couple of spray-bottle-water-guns, and a 30 year old slide and watching an afternoon disappear.



The nothing of assisting in the creation of a sandbox village while intermittently pulling weeds and splashing beet-root fertilizer on the garden.

The nothing of watching Elliot officially turn the corner from Mimic Queen to Loquacious Lady, making her own jokes, asking her own persistent questions, and generally entertaining Maya and I to no end.


Even the nothing of lounging on the playroom floor, waiting to be served ice cream tacos by Chef Maya and helping Elliot hush her fussy bunny rabbit.

These trifling activities of daily life are not fodder for good adult conversation. So I say "nothing" and breeze on to other topics, but beneath that nothing is exactly the simple, joyful, slowly-paced family life we hoped to have.

4 comments:

Bonnie said...

Simply wonderful!

Andrea said...

Okay, I might be in Cambodia, but I don't think "preparing a budget document" is exactly the sexiest of job descriptions. (However, ridding the world of AIDS on the other hand...)

Anonymous said...

Sarah, I can think of many a work day of mine that has been brightened up and made bearable by just reading your blog and "seeing" the girls. I'm sure I'm one of many. Dad

Sarah said...

Glad to brighten your day, Dad!

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