a rugs life

Sometime over the past week, I lost a daughter and gained a 5 year-old roomate.

The roomate wakes up, settles herself on the couch, politely asks for toast and butter (as she is unable to reach the counter) and then sits quietly reading her Thomas books. Across the room I sip my tea and read my Robertson Davies novel. It is uncannily civilized.

Twenty minutes later, the roomate gets up, puts her dishes in the sink, dresses herself, brushes her teeth, and chooses which animal to accompany her to school.

Then we head out the door (we carpool to work).

As we walk towards the car, she reminds me to look both ways before crossing the street. (Like all roomates, she can be a bit ‘mothering’, sometimes)

My daughter had her fifth birthday party a few weeks ago.  In my opinion the event was a disaster.

Rada had a full-scale meltdown at gift-opening time becase I would not allow her to play with her new toys unless she shared them with the others. So for the last 20 minutes of the party Rada wandered around the house, whining, no…. screaming with outrage that I would not let her bury herself in the corner by herself. The other guests looked on with a mixture of empathy and bewilderment.

A few photos recently came back from the infamous event and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember all the good times we had before the ‘denoument’, but they were there. We went to the park and blew enormous bubbles and we all held hands on the way back.

And there were the candles to blow out….