Right here, right now, the bathroom in my bedroom is immaculate. Save for the splotches of purple hair dye staining the tile in my shower, courtesy of my fifteen and thirteen-year-old daughters.
And the bedroom in which that bathroom is located is also immaculate. The ugly, scratchy, plaid bedspread has tears and snags, and the fabric is pilling. It holds stories, which, one day soon, I will throw away, along with the comforter.
The hallway has been swept and mopped, and the linen closet arranged in a most OCD fashion.
I seem to have misplaced my ability to orgasm.
Right here, right now, in the bedroom shared by my ten and thirteen-year-old daughters, the hamster’s cage is clean. Their closet, like mine, and the linen closet, has been compulsively cleaned and arranged. Black Doc Marten boots line up next to steel toed burgundy ones, next to gray Chuck Taylors. Outside of the closet, the room is not so clean. One corner holds a pile of toys. There is spilled potting soil under the window sill, where the cat knocked over a small plant. It is empty of the girls themselves, who completed their first ever week in school today. The ten-year-old with a cheerful smile on her face as she bounced out of the car towards a half day of school, the thirteen-year-old bidding a cheerful fuck you to the Monday-Thursday dress code of khakis and polo shirts with her black and purple hair shining over an Elmo t-shirt, jean shorts, and rainbow knee socks.
The fifteen-year-old’s room scares me. I stop at the door. It smells like dirty teenager laundry, which is scattered about everywhere, along with books, random scraps of paper, and god knows what else. The enormous ball python lazes in her clean terrarium. The girl cares much more about the snake’s environment than her own. No need to cross the threshold, my sex life, like my orgasm, may be missing in action (Ha! Get it? Missing inaction?), but it would not be so foolish as to hide out in the likes of this. I close the door and pretend that no mess resides on the other side.
The coat closet holds not a single coat. This is Phoenix. Instead, it houses three yoga mats, a set of cork yoga blocks, an assortment of yoga straps, a set of hand weights, and predictably (because what else would I keep in the All Yoga All The Time Closet?) a tray filled with birth supplies. All neatly arranged. No sign of anything missing or amiss.
The main bathroom, the one all three girls and company share, but which I rarely set foot in, is in a state of chaos. As I stoop to empty the overflowing trashcan and accidentally stick my hand in a puddle of spilled hair product, I say out loud, “Really, guys? Really?”
And I miss them with a tenderness equal to my disgust over the mess. I won’t see them again until Sunday morning. I see remnants of their presence over nearly every square inch of this bathroom. I beginning returning things to their rightful homes. Black fedora, Hope’s room, tube of mascara, my bathroom… and then I see it, and I laugh out loud. I count twice to be sure. In this bathroom shared by three girls, there are twelve toothbrushes. They fill the toothbrush holder and spill onto the counter. Why on earth do three people have twelve toothbrushes? Where on earth did they even acquire them, for that matter? I would throw the nine extras away, except I have no clue which ones are newest and actually in use. So the bathroom will contain a dozen toothbrushes until they return home.
Having tidied the counter, I start in on the medicine cabinet. I line up bottles of hair dye with names like Wild Flower, Deep Purple, and Atomic Pink, next to liquid eyeliners, green and black, respectively. They stand like a row of subversive little soldiers next to a ceramic barrette, a gift from an artist friend of ours. It is stamped with the words Complicated Beauty. Complicated beauty, indeed, that’s what this whole parenting thing is. I miss them with complete abandon and this brings me a sort of happiness. I love having teenage girls in the house.
Four fifteen. I won’t see the younger two until Sunday, but my oldest will be home soon. Soonish. Within the hour for sure.
I decide that dealing with their bathroom warrants a break. I stop arranging, grab a can of root beer from the refrigerator and head to the back porch to call my mama. I get a recording informing me that I have reached a number that is no longer in service. My mother has just finished several months of chemo. She has schizophrenia. What if? What if? The possibilities swirl in my brain, and my heart pounds. The most likely possibility is that she simply could not pay her phone bill. When I remind myself of this, my heart stops racing, but cellular memory of all of her tragedies past cause my foot to twitch. The twitching foot taunts me.
I start in on the living room. The living room is more or less basically clean all of the time. It soothes me. There is not much to do, so I rearrange.
Hope comes in through the side door. She cheerfully announces that is fucking hot, and that it is quiet, where are her sisters? I remind her that they are at her dad’s, and she chirps happily, “Oh, fuck yeah! This day just keeps getting better and better!”
And then she gives me the daily report on the awful substitute teacher she has had to endure for the last couple of days, and fills me in on the details of Ass Smack Friday, a school-wide event. I open my mouth, but shut it before any words escape. I remember being fifteen. She is fifteen, and she talks to me about her life without much censorship. I will not sully that connection.
Her ass is sore. She is happy and chatty. Her first week of high school. Her first week at any school. Big changes in her life.
Big changes in all of our lives.
Every single second changes the entire course of our lives. Sometimes we notice.
Our lives exist in the rooms that are clean and soothing, and the ones that overflow with dirty laundry and gum wrappers. They take place in spite of our surroundings and because of them.
We can be without fear, knowing that the tidy and the mess and the swirling chaos of it all is exactly where we need to be, and will always deposit us into the right circumstances for the next big thing.
It is painful and brimming with beauty. It is lucid and lazy, and frenetic energy. It is screaming orgasms and painful dry spells. It is sickness and health, wealth and poverty.
And we are here. In the middle of all this miracle. Can you believe we are really here? Can you believe we get to do all of this and more? This technicolor experience is brought to you by the letters B, R, E, A, T, and H. Don’t miss the previews, and be sure to stay for the credits. Don’t blink, you might miss something.
Be and be not afraid.
