Life. Cleaning up messes

Painting, Brian Kershisnik

Some messes grow over time. Given: that you need costumes for twenty children who will be presenting Twelfth Night; in a fatal distraction you settle on a time period for which you have nothing, not a single greatcoat or corset. After enough weeks of coping with that, mess results. A settled mess, deep, with strata and topography. Excavating later, you come upon that layer where you changed your mind about the fur or, here, unexpectedly ran out of the red satin or here, this knobby and blackened layer where one midnight you realized, wait, twins. Two identical sets of everything.

Other messes seem spontaneous, to defy time. A mess can materialize out of the clear blue sky with a suddenness and style to which freak weather can only hopelessly aspire. A car accident. You misjudge the depth of a refrigerator shelf or are jostled while applying mascara. And illness. Especially. Illness can sweep the pieces off the board, knock the board across the room, tip the table and the chairs, rearrange the players and cast into question the whole point of the game.

I remember very clearly watching one of the little sisters throw up in the kitchen and observing all of everyone's plans change. Instantly. Permanently. One parent at once reached into the charged circle and, straight armed, lifted the shocked, wide-eyed sister out, carrying it away for a drink and a cleaning and a changing. The other parent said "Don't get in that! Hold the baby!" and with no other outward sign of resolution, of drawing together powers or of preparation set to work cleaning up what was a very impressive mess. Of the quick kind. Most of what I could see had become involved and most of that was involved up to almost the level of my eyes (probably not a yard off the ground, but, still). My tiny self was amazed at the speed, duty and courage, the muscle memory and skill sets. This is what it means to be adult, I thought, knowing how to clean up any mess without help. Some day, I will be like them.
Awe.

One day my tiny son filled not only his tiny diaper and tiny clothing but his tiny car seat with yellow baby poop. In the middle of New Mexico he did this, with nary a trading post in sight and who knew how far till the next one. (Brian insists this happened in Colorado but he does NOT know what he is TALKING about. They don't have trading posts is Colorado. Hush, Brian.) Gazing at my happy little son, cooing and purring at me as he wiggled in the stuff he had made for us, I had (and not for the last time) that desperate babysitter feeling. Where the heck are your parents? What could possibly be keeping them? This was the moment my adulthood came upon me, there alone in the wilds of the American Southwest with only Brian and this stinky baby and not enough, oh, nowhere near, nothing like enough wipes or paper napkins or boiling water and clean sheets and towels. This was my mess to clean. It had slammed into my life like a runaway semi truck. The time of preparation was past. Whatever I had with me was all there was going to be.
I was a big girl, now, and I was going to clean up the messes.

That was not fun.

My son is now on his own in Hong Kong and recently wrote that he has learned why you feel so great for a few moments after you are sick. It's so you can clean up your mess.
Hurry.
This is what it means to be an adult.

Illness is no fun.

Fun is what children exist to have, to gain, to get, to spend. The first sort of messes (the organic, slower sort) sprout, root and spring up in the heat and damp of profligate fun. They happen in the thick of the glory of it all and no one quite sees how it was done or why it happened and can therefore, when the fun is over and done, honestly claim total irresponsibility. In an ideal world, fun properly had wouldn't leave so many trails and marks that end in recrimination and retribution.

In an ideal world there would be better planning. Think before you mess. Clean as you go and no one will know.
Plans. Everyone plans not to get sick.
Sick is a mess that wipes out yards and miles of fun.

The other day the youngest of my children sat up suddenly in the car, speaking in that thick voice that comes out of a deep sleep. "I think I might throw up," she said, taken completely by surprise. In the next few moments a lot of people were going to be surprised.
We were at that instant in the middle lane, on the freeway, in heavy, fast-moving end-of-three day weekend traffic. Thinking more clearly than sometimes happens, Brian advised her to roll down the window. At once. She obeyed with alacrity and availed herself of that void.
This is where the surprises begin.

One of the first surprises was that the her window, having become ensorcelled in a child-safety nightmare, failed to go completely down, so that as she rushed toward what should have been an absence and a release, the glass sort of met her halfway. I suppose it was, in an inanimate way, only trying to help and we do comfort ourselves that she wasn't even close to being thrown headlong out of the speeding car and onto the asphalt.
I was driving in dense difficult traffic, trying to help my youngest child, ignore my husband, figure out how to pull over safely (this is where the ignoring is so very important) and unhex the window. Blessedly, I mastered the driver's side window controls before the second assault.

The next difficulty was only truly a surprise for the less experienced passengers in the back seat. The older people riding in front knew, as you do, that at freeway speeds, a liquid ejected from a car window will, upon meeting the airstream outside, be at least partially borne back into the car.

Re-entrance of throw up set off her older sibling. Like a car alarm. This was not at all a surprise. For a good time, put a bit of seaweed on the older sister. Or a bug. Any old bug will do. In fact, you can just say you have a bug, mime a bug. Or come up behind her with something that in no way resembles a bug, say, a piece of paper. Depending on your favorite flavor of humor and ability to withstand extreme noises, these actions can be very enjoyable and quite bracing. I am endlessly diverted in these maneuvers.

After a bit the action inside the car sort of died down. We were no longer producing, um, plot, and except for the new atmospheric conditions, everyone was quite well. Mostly. We were pretty freezing because, chilly day though it was, we found ourselves more comfortable with all the windows all the way down. My poor baby had gotten well and truly plastered, her sister and her little cousin (yes. there was a cousin. they were supposed to go play together. have fun. change of plans) were leaning away as far as they could while the older one of them executed a truly dazzling vocal display. I believe she was performing echo location of all the scattered throw up and at the same time providing color commentary ("Eew! It's in your eyebrows!!!"). The painter, issuing orders right and left, was also stretching his vocal abilities because his wife hadn't yet pulled over. We were nearly home and I didn't see the point. By now I have knowledge borne of long experience and despite frantic, loud advice from husband and older child, I knew there was no way we were going to do any cleaning worth the name on the side of the road with two napkins and no water.

Besides, I was laughing too hard to do more than (barely) drive in a safe and responsible manner.

We dropped off the cousin.
We stopped at a light and I could look back fully at my sweet youngest child. She smiled at me (feeling good for a moment) and said, "I feel so sorry for the car behind us."

Surprises.

The whole time I was remembering the night I had filled the back seat of my parents' car with sickness from horrible, terrible stage fright. On the way to the end-of-the-year program in sixth grade. It was the first ever end-of-the-year program at Fillmore Elementary and our class was to dance the jitterbug. My mom had located for me a bright purple fake-o flapper dress with mmmiles of white fringe. Piles of beads. Feather stuck in the headband in my (waist length) hair. Makeup. I was the real deal. The bee's knees. And I was paralyzed, breathless and witless, squeezed by the terror that slammed into me before every important event in my life up to that minute.

And I told my dad to pull over.
Not quick enough.
You've got to hurry, some messes seem to defy time.

My mom tried to clean me up but we just weren't equipped. For some reason now forgotten I had other clothes with me, church clothes. My mom told me we would have to go home, things being what they were I could never perform. But I was feeling good, now, and I started directing. Maybe for the first time, really. (Hmm. I see we are in an abyss. Well, let's just think a minute.) I told her we would make the best of this, I would perform in my other clothes. After all, I still had my beads (untouched) and my feather.
We got back into the car with my understandably offended family and drove in (chilly) silence and heavy atmosphere to the school. And I joined my class.
Late.
(as did my sisters, I guess, but I don't remember them at all. I suppose they had lives, too, but I was distracted.)
I had the sudden, fixed, whispered attention of all the sixth grade girls. You met these girls in an earlier memory, the ones I once told ghost stories to. They knew I had a costume, they had seen it, but now, now I didn't have it on. They sensed plot. Tragedy? Failure? Disgrace?
I lied.

The jitterbug was so so so much fun. I had no time to get sick again before we went on as I was still floating in that strange, after-disaster euphoria. I danced my heart out, danced in my a line navy blue skirt and button-up white shirt in a sea of lace and fringe, danced not like no one could see me but like everyone could. And sat down afterward and thought about the evening and all the self knowledge it had brought.
I was surprised.
I had Learned a Lesson.
Nothing was as bad as being scared of it.
Nothing was worth getting destroyed by fear.
Performing in front of people was fun.
Getting sick was no fun.
I planned the rest of my life right then.

So well did I plan that I completely lost my stage fright. In order, later, to drum up any approximation of nerves, the lazy performer's shortcut to good energy, I would have to resort to strange techniques like eating only sugar on the day of a performance.
I was never sick again.
I was triumphant. But I was still a child.
My mom cleaned up the mess.

So, here I am, now, looking at my car, my own car and it was stunning. The entire rear was affected, coated and wrapped almost around to the other side.
I sent my small girl directly into the shower. She dropped her clothes in the laundry on the way (and, incidentally, her ipod, which was in a pocket. she informed me later, eyes full of tears, that she had Learned a Lesson). I stood and considered the car. Should have gone to a professional establishment. But, no, I had too long ago become the mother. There was no one to help me. The painter took off at once as he was now almost late for a speaking engagement. The older sister wickedly hotfooted it next door to inflict her innocent sister's tragedy upon the neighbors. Who laughed and guffawed in a most unsportsman like fashion. This was not cricket and created a score that I, in my role as Parent Divine, shall take upon myself to settle. Come to think of it, a cricket would just do it, but I haven't one to hand. What's that little black thing on the floor there? A feather? Hand it over here. Lovely. I'll just tuck it into her bed. Yes. Perfect. Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah. How do you get throw up out of a car door? Out of the inside?
I really should know. I'm the mother. That's what it means to be an adult.
Where are these children's parents? Shouldn't they be here by now?

Noah's installation and photo