Now that our eldest is off to college, the house is no longer populated by gangling young men from the rock group or the lacrosse team. Instead, our daughter, the interior decorator, and our daughter, the disc jockey, have taken the spotlight.
I am starting to feel out of touch. I noticed it just yesterday in one of those avant garde shops where the lamps look like street lights and the peace sign is embroidered on everything except the candles.
A young man with handle-bar mustache and amber-colored glasses was explaining an aluminum and burlap wall hanging to my daughter, the decorator, while he straightened the creases in his orange and hot pink striped, bell bottom slacks.
I felt as though I should go off in a corner and try on orthopedic shoes or have my teeth looked at.
“Yes, I see exactly what you mean,” she gushed. “The empathy of the metal does it all.”
Back home, the other daughter was copying notes in her notebook as she listened to a disc jockey announce number 20 of the top 80 in a voice covered with peanut butter and jam.
I had a feeling it was going to be one of those weekends where the disc jockeys play all the top 1600 hits from the last three years, and she runs about sighing, “Oh, oh, it’s my favorite!” The titles all begin or sound like “I’d Like to Love You More,” “I Want to Love You So,” or “I Can’t Love You Anymore.” Done, of course by groups like the Purple Jug or the Broken Axle.
The first week their brother left for college the girls subdivided the house. They very graciously decided Mom and Dad should keep their bedroom, since no one would ever begin to get Mom’s desk cleared out anyway. However they decided brother would no longer need such a big bedroom and they pack up his rock (rock rocks!) collection, his overdue library books, and older sister moved in, His aquarium stayed,even though there are only two fish left and they can’t stand one another, but, somehow he feels that as long as the aquarium is still there he can still come back to the room someday.
Down came the Beatles and up went Romeo and Juliet.
The chemistry set got packed in a closet while big sister very thoughtfully went through borther’s outgrown shirts and found some that fit her.
Dolly, the decorator, charmed Dad in to sanding the floor and painting her entire room white. While Dad lost his religion over the sanding operation, she methodically cleaned sister’s things out of the closet. This included every handbag ever owned by the child beginning with the Guatemalan donkey feed bag, numbering at least thirty, all in pretty bad shape. (When your old things are turned down by Goodwill and Salvation Army, you know you’ve kept them too long!)
Dixie, the disc jockey discovered an all-night soul station. I developed the habit of sleeping with cotton in my ears.
The hallway became very cluttered. In the process of subdivision., boxes of things got placed throughout it. Let Mom throw it out, because I haven’t the courage! The three-dimensional puzzles, the outgrown sneakers, the bedroom slippers looking like droned pink rabbits, and the old class pictures with the cracked fold right down the middle.
The dog began to get confused about where she should take a nap while someone was in the bathroom. She started sleeping on the stairsteps and falling down the steps as soon as she fell asleep.
“You’ve got to do something about that dog. I don’t have time! I have another fabric shop to go to tonight,” I said, doing the cake walk to number 56 out of the top 94 called “Love me a Little More.”
Dolly, the decorator now beguiled her father into putting up a Japanese paper shade on 15 feet of brass chain, the paper shade came in red, yellow, and pink squares and cast an opium-like glow over the yellow furniture and the leopard skin bedspread.
“Where has my little pink and white checked gingham girl gone to?” I sobbed.
“Mother, you’re hilarious,” said Dixie, the disc jockey, as she made her way through the boxes in the hallway carrying her transistor and a gallon of bubble bath into the bathroom. There were just starting number 60 called “You Always Were a Lousy Lover/”
The dog fell asleep and tumbled down the steps one more time. I began to think almost wistfully of those long fall afternoons when their brother comes home with his knapsack full of dirty shirts and the empty cookie jar. At least, I still know how to starch a shirt and roll out a mean chocolate chip cookie.
“What do you think of a black light poster depicting the arrival of the Rolling Stones in Vienna during 1963?” I was asked.
“It has a certain empathy,” I replied thoughtfully.
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