Labor Day weekend. Yippee. (Can’t you feel the love?)
Actually, it wasn’t too bad. I think I’m just using my sarcasm out of habit.
My dad’s family came over Sunday for a cook-out and Monday dad and I re-stained the deck. I have five cousins, but they’re all younger. I took care of the youngest most of the day. He’s two and a half, and he’s absolutely crazy. I felt like I was an old woman he moved so fast and never needed rest. But you know what? Although I wanted to shake him sometime because he’s so stubborn, I enjoyed playing with him.
See, I don’t like people, but I like kids. I have no deranged notion that kids are somehow innocent — Alex lied easy enough when I asked him if he had eaten my cookie — but even their evil is simple. I’m not sure how to explain it.
I have no proof, but it seems to me it’s like this: kids lie, but they know it’s a lie and they lie to get what they want. But it seems to me adults lie, but they come to believe it’s the truth, and they lie not just because they want something, but they’ve convinced themselves that the world is supposed to work that way. Kids are still new to evil; adults thrive in it.
And I feel like I can teach Alex, that he’ll listen and grow and change. He isn’t finished yet. Adults keep all the same bad habits, but they disguise them with such sophistication they seem like virtues.
On Monday, I whined and complained. It was absurdly hot outside, and our deck has all these thin rails going up and down that take forever to paint. I sweated and got oil-based stain all over me. And in the evening we sat in the air-conditioned house and watched The Fastest Indian because my dad loves that movie.
So, really, it was a good weekend. My mom and I didn’t fight. My brother (have I mentioned him?) even hung around part of the weekend instead of hiding inside playing Halo or something.
I’ve been thinking about the weekend a lot. That’s why I haven’t written. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. It’s called Labor Day, and I found that watching Alex and staining the deck were meaningful labor for me. I did something–with a person in the first case; with my hands in the second. Sometimes I think what I really want are kids and manual labor. Isn’t that the simple life? But what 18-year-old wants to skip everything and be a mom? Does that even happen nowadays? Or, as usual, am I just a weirdo?