Daughter's bedroom, circa 2000
I was shocked the other day when I saw my daughter Kimmi pass through the den.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, then shot upstairs to her room.
She and her sister Kate recently turned 18. They don’t normally check in during waking hours.
I blinked. Down the stairs she flew. “Bye, Daddy.” The front door slammed and she was gone.
My daughter had been reduced to a fleeting image in my life. Why wasn’t she home more often?
I laughed at the answer. She wasn’t home because she had no place to stay. According to gossip, her room, once habitable, had experienced a cataclysmic event.
I decided I would fix this problem. I would fix it by cleaning her room.
With a Marine’s demeanor I ventured upstairs and stood dry-mouthed before her bedroom door, which is chronically closed. I nudged it open.
I marveled as the hallway carpeting, a solid green, became a collage of hues and rugged relief as it spread throughout her room. I was particularly fascinated with the pile of unwashed relief keeping the door from opening past the quarter-way point. Shouldering the door like a blocking sled, I muscled the laundry back enough to slip inside.
I stood, calculating where next to place my feet. Along with clothes, her floor was a final resting place for CDs, jewelry, fast food bags, schoolbooks, pictures, half our kitchen’s tableware, and a monopoly on the world’s Coke cans.
I had the feeling everything was in delicate balance, like an ecosystem. If I took a wrong step, civilization as we knew it would collapse.
I found patches of green breaking through here and there and leapfrogged from one spot to the next, making my way to the other side of her bed.
Then I stared at the floor next to where she slept.
The quake had jumbled the contents of her dresser with weeks-old glasses of milk you could invert without spilling, supine Cheez-It boxes supporting upright Cheez-It boxes, puddles of chocolate syrup welded to the carpet, plates of once-edible black stuff, a cornucopia of spent tissues and Q-tips -- all intermingled with little red cans, most of them open and still brimming.
I wanted to run for my life. Instead I ran to the garage.
I fetched industrial-strength trash bags and came back. I hauled out clothes, Cokes, and virescent French fries. I scraped the syrup with a steel brush. When the brush wore out I got a stronger one. As carpet emerged I attacked the room by vacuum. Then I brought in heavier artillery, the deep-clean machine.
My shirt was sopping when I finished. But the clutter was gone. You could walk around recklessly, without looking at your feet. I had opened her quarters to the living.
She once again had a place to stay.
Kimmi arrived home much later and whisked past me to her room upstairs. This time I waited with a victor’s smile.
Soon she came skipping down the steps. “Daddy!” she exclaimed. My smile broadened. “What is it, sweetheart?” I asked.
“Can I borrow ten dollars? I’m going to meet Lindsay at the food court.”
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, then shot upstairs to her room.
She and her sister Kate recently turned 18. They don’t normally check in during waking hours.
I blinked. Down the stairs she flew. “Bye, Daddy.” The front door slammed and she was gone.
My daughter had been reduced to a fleeting image in my life. Why wasn’t she home more often?
I laughed at the answer. She wasn’t home because she had no place to stay. According to gossip, her room, once habitable, had experienced a cataclysmic event.
I decided I would fix this problem. I would fix it by cleaning her room.
With a Marine’s demeanor I ventured upstairs and stood dry-mouthed before her bedroom door, which is chronically closed. I nudged it open.
I marveled as the hallway carpeting, a solid green, became a collage of hues and rugged relief as it spread throughout her room. I was particularly fascinated with the pile of unwashed relief keeping the door from opening past the quarter-way point. Shouldering the door like a blocking sled, I muscled the laundry back enough to slip inside.
I stood, calculating where next to place my feet. Along with clothes, her floor was a final resting place for CDs, jewelry, fast food bags, schoolbooks, pictures, half our kitchen’s tableware, and a monopoly on the world’s Coke cans.
I had the feeling everything was in delicate balance, like an ecosystem. If I took a wrong step, civilization as we knew it would collapse.
I found patches of green breaking through here and there and leapfrogged from one spot to the next, making my way to the other side of her bed.
Then I stared at the floor next to where she slept.
The quake had jumbled the contents of her dresser with weeks-old glasses of milk you could invert without spilling, supine Cheez-It boxes supporting upright Cheez-It boxes, puddles of chocolate syrup welded to the carpet, plates of once-edible black stuff, a cornucopia of spent tissues and Q-tips -- all intermingled with little red cans, most of them open and still brimming.
I wanted to run for my life. Instead I ran to the garage.
I fetched industrial-strength trash bags and came back. I hauled out clothes, Cokes, and virescent French fries. I scraped the syrup with a steel brush. When the brush wore out I got a stronger one. As carpet emerged I attacked the room by vacuum. Then I brought in heavier artillery, the deep-clean machine.
My shirt was sopping when I finished. But the clutter was gone. You could walk around recklessly, without looking at your feet. I had opened her quarters to the living.
She once again had a place to stay.
Kimmi arrived home much later and whisked past me to her room upstairs. This time I waited with a victor’s smile.
Soon she came skipping down the steps. “Daddy!” she exclaimed. My smile broadened. “What is it, sweetheart?” I asked.
“Can I borrow ten dollars? I’m going to meet Lindsay at the food court.”
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