The school morning drill was a success, I had both girls cleaned, dressed, combed and eating their breakfasts in under forty minutes. “Like riding a bike.” I thought. But now, there is a daunting amount of day ahead of us. I had pretty much given up on keeping them interested. My bag of summer activity ideas had been empty for over a week. The engine and rudder are out, we’ll be coasting into this port.
Then Reggie spoke, “I have an idea! Let’s build a fort!”
“That’s a great idea!” Lydia replied, “First, we need this blanket, we can attach it to the desk chair.”
“No. We lay the blanket across the play table, then we can stretch it out to the desk chair.”
“That will pull the blanket off. That won’t work. And the table is too small to crawl under.”
“It’s not too small for me! I’ll just use these books to hold it down.” Half the bookshelf was instantly emptied.
I’m a shell of what I was two months ago. Half the books are strewn across the floor. I don’t blink at it, I don’t even care, “Make sure to pick up all those books.” I vaguely muttered. “Make sure to pick up [insert name here]” is a thing I say fourteen times a day, every day.
Lydia replied to Reg, “That won’t work, the stack will move too much.”
“Your chair idea is stupid Lydia!”
“The table idea is stupid Regina.”
“I hate your fort!”
(Lydia gasped) “Regina, we’re not allowed to hate!”
Regina grumbled. “I’ll build my fort right here without you.”
“Fine. I’ll build my fort in this corner! Without YOU!”
“My fort will travel in time.”
“I don’t want to go to whatever time you travel to.”
“Fine. I don’t need you for my time machine fort.”
“And I don’t need you for my art fort.” I quietly chuckled. Switch one letter and you get “fart ort”. It looks really dumb now that it’s written out, but it was pretty funny in my head.
And with those sharp declarations, we had two forts on opposite ends of the living room. Between them, a dystopic DMZ, strewn with board books, cheap crane game stuffed animals, over-scented lip balm, a one-hole-punch for paper (why?), some random doll shoes and a cracked roll of scotch tape (I accidentally stepped on it last week). If we added barbed wire and plucky 1920s era dialogue it would have been no man’s land, or rather no kid’s land. It was not an easy place to navigate, but the girls were quiet. The house was quiet. I was not about to do anything to disrupt the uneasy peace that had settled.
Then Regina burst out of her fort, ran across the living room and tore down Lydia’s art fort.
The uneasy peace has been broken. We then had a Hatfields and McCoys situation at hand.
With them shrieking at each other in the background, I stared out the kitchen window, “School starts next week.” I said quietly into my coffee mug, “School Starts next week.”