I don't think I'm alone in this, but periodically, my parents come to visit, and for some reason this can be very stressful. Don't get me wrong, my parents are great--they're helpful, supportive, flexible, and interested in everything we do. They are skillful and experienced with children, they are capable and creative problem-solvers, and they know how to do, fix, or build almost anything. But in spite of this--or maybe because of it--there is a certain amount of pressure surrounding the parent visit. I want the house to be clean and the children well-behaved. I want the food to be delicious, the beds to be comfortable, and the schedule to run smoothly. And I want to make it look easy, like we're not really going to any trouble. Like this is the daily norm. Like we know what we're doing and we've got everything under control.
All of this, however, is much easier said than done, especially if your parents, like mine, live far enough away that a visit often entails an overnight stay. We might be able to hold it together for a couple of hours, but getting through dinner, showers, bedtime, and breakfast without incident is practically impossible. It's almost guaranteed that at multiple times during the visit, there will be a situation in which I have clearly lost control of my children, my household, and possibly my life. At which point my wise, supportive, helpful parents will helpfully offer advice on how I could resolve said situation and even avoid it in future. Nevertheless, I was determined that this week's visit, this 16-hour window, would be my moment for success. We would be calm, cool, collected, and competent. Really.
And I have to say, everything started off so well. My checklist was looking good. Clean floors, clean kids' rooms, clean bathrooms. Clean kitchen, clean oven. Clean trash can. Dinner in the slow cooker, so no last-minute rush to the table. Laundry sorted, folded, put away. Kid's bikes in the shed, everyone dressed in something decent, kids' chores done. Grocery trip to make sure there's food in the house and we're not out of anything I can think of. Homemade dessert chilling in the fridge, spare room cleaned and bed made.
All that remained was to make one required trip to ferry the younger one to an appointment and drop off the friend of the older one who'd stayed over the previous night, arriving back home just in time. While I was thus occupied, my husband had only to finish taking down the Christmas decorations and get them to the attic. (Yep. That's right. Wanna make something of it?) We were on the home stretch. How could anything go wrong?
About 15 minutes before departure time, however, as the boys were quietly playing board games in their room, I suddenly heard a loud crashing noise. Followed by a minute or two of complete silence, an exchange of child voices, and the ominous approach of a sobbing 8-year-old, who, as far as I could decipher, seemed to be telling me something about a broken window and his brother's trombone.
The full story turned out to be as follows: The older boys, in order to make room on the floor for their two sleeping bags, gangly pre-teen bodies, and large game board with attending pieces, had moved furniture and objects off to the side of the bedroom. This included the trombone in its hard-shell case, which takes up a lot of real estate--it had even been stood up on the flat end of the case, to minimize the amount of floor space required to accommodate it. The younger one, in his wiggly glee at being allowed in his older brother's bedroom to watch the game in progress, had unwittingly bumped into the standing trombone case, knocking it off balance. The trombone teetered, tilted, and fell directly in the middle of the adjacent window pane. Our old, single-pane window shattered with an impressive crash into possibly a million pieces. (The trombone, which is covered by an expensive protection agreement, of course was unharmed.)
I still needed to leave the house immediately and be gone for the duration of our appointment. My husband, having time to solve only one problem before parents were incoming, chose the Christmas decorations. (Thank goodness.) So when my parents arrived, my son's room was full of broken glass and a brisk, freezing wind. My husband was attempting to implement a temporary solution with plastic sheeting and tape. The children were running through the house and up and down the stairs, repeatedly ejecting the cats, who required only 2.9 seconds after breakage to discover that the window frame was empty and they could get into the house. I was trying to figure out how to wash my son's pillow, the game board, and assorted other items that one of the cats, in the excitement of the chase, had elected to pee all over. My son's carpet reeked of Resolve and cat urine. My mother, to her credit, said mildly, "What happened to your window?" And I replied in a very calm, cool, and collected fashion, "Oh, the usual. A trombone went through it."
It actually turned out not to be so bad. My dad provided tape, labor, and a remarkable amount of restraint to help my husband make the window airtight. The cats were returned to their perches on the porch. My mother made no comment at all on the window situation, was complimentary of the dinner I served (which of course had turned to glue in the slow cooker while the cat/window rodeo was in progress), and had no helpful advice or comments to offer on anything else at all. Except that I need to bleach my cutting board.
Oh well. Maybe next time.
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