"Elephant at Home"

ELEPHANT AT HOME

I love my daughter dearly, but having her home for the holidays is somewhat akin to inviting an elephant in to stay. Elephants are wonderful, talented, intelligent creatures, but they leave in their wakes concrete evidence of their passage. Nothing subtle

What Olivia lacks in elephantine bulk and grandeur, she more than compensates for with pachydermal disregard for delicate surroundings. It is amazing to me sometimes that a young woman so graceful on cross-country skis, so precise in swimming lanes, so body-aware on dance floors, and so keenly intuitive in classrooms can lumber so lummoxedly through the environs of my home without apparently noticing—or perhaps not caring to notice—her own destructive force.

Within moments of her arrival, messes were already being made. Piles of debris quickly began to form. Across the kitchen counter. In the hallway by the stairs. In the living room. In her bedroom and bathroom. In the garage. Within minutes, she had also made a cursory examination of the place and had begun determining strategies. Her future actions were buried in her many questions: “Whose ice cream is that in the freezer?” (I found the empty carton in the garbage later that day.) “Is Kelty going to be taking the Jeep to school tomorrow?” (She had somewhere to go and wanted personal transportation.) “Do you still have the movie Pleasantville?” (She later dug through my closet of films to find what she wanted.) “Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean?” (She systematically began leaving dirty dishes and food wrappers all around the house—on a desk in her bedroom, next to the sink in the bathroom, on the carpeted floor in the living room, and, of course, scattered throughout the dining room and kitchen.)

Suddenly toothpaste smears appeared on bathroom counters, yogurt smears on the knobs of kitchen cupboards, makeup smears on mirrors, dirty-hand smears on light switches. Each room she entered, she left little doubt of her presence.

I came home from town one day to find water in my coffee maker—but no filter, no grounds; she had decided to use the coffee maker to heat water for her tea, heedless of the fact that a teapot nearly full of water was sitting atop my stove. Other changes were more subtle: For instance, the pillows on my bed had been moved so that she could be more comfortable while she watched television upstairs, probably while eating. Bits of cereal crunched beneath my feet as I walked down the hallway to her bedroom to wake her in the morning. There were more spill stains in the kitchen, tiny scraps of colored paper left on the living room floor after she had finished wrapping Christmas presents, and many, many cupboards and drawers, doors and boxes, left partway open as if to advertise that someone had recently peered inside.

I’ve told Olivia many times that she should never become a thief because she has no idea how to cover her crimes.

Perhaps more than anything, however, my daughter is “guilty” of disrupting a routine I’ve established in her absence—of cleaning up after myself more regularly and promptly, of streamlining activities by using less of the house, by following the actions of one child instead of two. In this regard, Kelty helps—most of the time—by confining his movements primarily to the living room, dining room and his bedroom, where he eats and does homework, plays video games and watches television, and sleeps. He’s not the neatest child in the world, either—and neither was I, as my mother would be the first to shout—but he’s decidedly lower in decibels than his sister and spreads himself considerably less thin. Other than the inevitable wadded-up pair of socks and perhaps an empty cereal bowl—oh, and a pile of crumpled dirty clothes behind the bathroom door after he takes a shower—Kelty leaves few signs of his presence. Even his appetite is less wide-ranging. Blandly forging ahead on a diet of cereal and milk, soup and crackers, iced tea, an occasional cup of yogurt, clumps of sandwich meat, and as much fruit juice as he can find, he is a predictable eater, whereas Olivia harvests on a whim. Whatever springs to her mind, she seeks to consume or prepare. Consequently, foodstuffs disappear randomly or sporadically. Pickles the first night, for instance. Spoon-shaped gouges out of my expensive cheese the next night. Then a third of a container of fresh tortellini.

Granted, Olivia has just spent four months at college practicing her independence; I expected her to be more assertive and grown-up. Her actions at home, however, have been reversions to form. This Olivia is still the Olivia that was.

But despite these complaints about my daughter, I am delighted to have her home. Despite her galumphing around my house, and her bull-in- china-shop movements, there are nice touches, too: more-adult conversations; face-to-face updates (versus Skype, texting, emails, and telephone calls) about her life and interests and plans; a more-willing companion for physical exercise (such as boot camp or skiing) and spur-of-the-moment activities (such as movies or shopping or making snow angels).

First-born Olivia is a big presence—like an elephant—and when she’s gone, it’s difficult not to notice.