Whirlwind

Whirlwind

A month has disappeared. May was here and now it’s gone. And though this happens every year this May’s disappearance is especially missed since it took Lisa and Mariel with it. April 30th Lisa walked off a plane from India and into our arms and before we could exhale she walked right out and back to her own life again. As I keep telling my daughters, “Why can’t you guys just rotten up so that I’ll be happy when you leave?!” But they refuse to cooperate and keep on being the lovely young ladies that they are. What’s a mother to do?

I remember thinking during the last few weeks that Lisa was in India, “Soon she’ll be home for a whole month—enjoy every second.” Easier thought than actually done. Everyday life kept getting in the way of the moment and I let it. It’s easy to be in-the-moment when you’re on vacation. Up till now I was always home when the girls came back for vacation. But this time around I was working, so it made for some interesting times.

Mariel says that the way you know that Lisa is home is that the floor of her room disappears. When Lisa left in November I managed to cram her clothing into her closet and drawers. Since there was barely room for a toothpick I wondered how she was going to fit in all the stuff she would inevitably buy. The answer was simple: she couldn’t. It all ended up in piles on her floor. Poor Snoopy would stand on the threshold of her room, gaze wistfully at her bed, then gingerly tip toe in and around the piles till he reached it. It was a virtuoso performance.

The pile also grew on the bathroom vanity. Every time I walked in I noticed something new had been added. After a while I gave up trying to clean under the stuff and would just go around everything. And every time I would say to myself, “You’re going to miss this when she’s gone, you know you will.” But that’s hard to visualize when you’ve just come home from work exhausted.

Then came the day of laundry. One rainy day three weeks after Lisa had come home, there was so much clothing hanging in the bathroom that it took on all the chic ambiance of a commercial laundry. It turned out that Lisa had just gotten around to unpacking her bag and had decided to wash everything. I prayed that the washer and dryer would make it through the day. Miraculously they’ve been running since 1989 and I keep waiting for them to break down in the middle of a wash cycle. So I tend to get nervous when the washer decides to conga across the room. Somehow though, that day was not a good day for it to die, and it survived to wash another day.

Our life became truly interesting when Mariel came for a long week-end, forcing us to figure out schedules for four people with two cars. Mariel had appointments in various places, Lisa had plans in the city and I had to get to work. Steve became the official Schottenfeld chauffeur.

For the past few months Steve has been working from home starting his own business. On a usual day he doesn’t emerge from his downstairs office until it’s time to pick me up. But with two daughters needing to be taken hither and yon he kissed his work schedule good-bye. I would come home and see my husband with a strange glazed expression in his eyes and know that the question, “So what did you do today?” would not be a welcome one. One evening we spent half an hour at the dinner table writing out a schedule of pick-ups and drop-offs that would have impressed the British secret service. It was a masterpiece. I was just glad that it wasn’t me who was driving it.

And then, at the end of that day, we had to prepare dinner for a guest that Lisa had invited, her old room mate Pria. Pria’s parents had treated Lisa like a queen when she visited them in India. I wanted to do the same for Pria but since she was a strict vegetarian, it was Lisa who had to cook dinner. So I came home to a scene that any restaurant chef would be proud of, but that simply exhausted me—Lisa cutting, chopping and mixing in every dish in the house, while Mariel was baking on the dining room table. I took one look at the piles of pots, pans and dishes and poured myself a glass of wine.

The evening was wonderful. The food was so good I licked my fingers, the dessert divine, the conversation fascinating and just plain fun. We didn’t want Pria to go home but we were all so exhausted that we had to.

And now, of course, the girls are gone, and so is the clutter, the craziness, the fun and the laughter. Steve and I have returned to our safe, sane, boring schedule. And Snoopy and I stand at the threshold of two bedrooms, gazing in, despondent, able to easily enter and yet not wanting to. Unfortunately now we have all the time in the world to live in-the-moment and the moment is so lonely. I told me so.