I never quite realized how much stuff my mom does. It’s not just sweeping the kitchen floor, teaching piano students or taking care of her cockatiel. With her in the hospital, the house experiences entropy at an alarming rate, and the cause is not always clear.
Why is there a pile of junk on the table? Because Mom sorts the stuff every night. Why are there 47 unread messages in the AOL inbox? Mom keeps up on email. Why do the bathrooms look terrible? Mom wipes them down every other day. Why is Dad’s hair getting so long? You guessed it…
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| Actually, I'm pretty domestic when I'm on the road, too. |
The entire family has been scrambling to pick up the slack. I find myself doing more chores than I have in many years. Yesterday, wearing a long skirt and an apron, cradling the phone on my shoulder talking to Mary while sweeping the floor, I felt incredibly domestic.
I have become the Stationary Mandolin once again. For the moment, my life is cooking and cleaning and editing papers, and I try to take time to write down the memories of a different world, full of bus-catching and couchsurfing and meeting new people. I don’t necessarily like one world better than the other. One is just easier to write about.
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