Cleaning, Eaves Dropping and Remembering

I've spent the afternoon rearranging all of my stuff in my art loft. It serves several purposes, has no closet, and is undeniably a huge mess.

I use the room for rubber-stamping and drawing cards. Also, for making shadow boxes, and doing decoupage. I use it for storing books too. There are three book cases, and piles and piles of books all over the floor. This room also stores my sewing machine, material, patterns, and baskets and baskets full of yarn. And anything else I find interesting. Which means that there is a lot of stuff that doesn't fall into any sort of category, causing me to get all out of sorts and itchy.

It isn't too hot today, so it was a good time for me to get in there. I turned on the attic fan and opened some windows. It wasn't all that bad.

It's interesting what one hears when one is working by a window. Five neighborhood kids were playing out in the parking lot. Four boys and one girl. Apparently they had decided to play house, as I heard the girl announce that she was going to be the mom. One boy called out to be the dad, and then a very interesting conversation took place among the other three boys. What were THEY going to be? One of them finally took charge, and this is what he came up with. "I'll be the ex-husband, you can be the boyfriend, and you can be the 21 year old son who still lives at home".

The dialog as they played kept getting more and more interesting. The scenes they played out involved the mom always fighting with the ex-husband on the telephone. Usually about money, or about how he had to stop hitting the kids. The 21 year old had a car, and they fought about that too.

How different from when I played house. My friend Betty and I used to fight over who got to be the dad (it went to whichever one of us had the shortest hair at the time - there was a SEVERE shortage of boys in the old neighborhood). One of the Three Pam's in the neighborhood usually was the mom. The neighbors behind us had 5 girls, and where usually more than happy to loan us a few. I never wanted to be the mom, as I knew what MY mom did all day. She worked HARD around the house. My dad left in a car and brought with him a really cool black lunch pail. So, being the dad meant that I got to ride my bike around the neighborhood until the work whistle blew.

Even though we had to have females play the roll of the dad, we clearly had a dad. And real live children and dolls for babies - the more the merrier. Although I know that some of my friends had dad's who screamed and yelled at them, we all knew that wasn't how it was supposed to be. We all had dads. Dads who we ran to when they got home from work. We all had moms who were mostly at home. If they weren't, an aunt or grandma or older sibling was always around to protect and defend us. Nobody I knew had a mom with an ex-husband. Or a boyfriend. And at 21, no brothers still hung around the house arguing about who got the car.

The Husband God Gave Me never knew his father. His mother had three ex-husbands and at times, boyfriends. But, he always knew it wasn't right.

I don't think the kids playing in the parking lot know this.

It's sad.