Lord of the Flies
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
The following piece was actually written last winter in a spare few moments I had to fill. With the exception of a few minor edits for clarity, it’s almost completely untouched. This is the first time I’ve dipped into my unpublished catalog to post something. I’m not running out of steam creatively. I am actually trying to clear my PC of documents in order to find material easier. Much of the subject matter here still pertains to my writing environment on weekends (which I am especially looking forward to this week), except the children are much older and so am I. There’s also the familiar domestic theme that seems to influence so much of my work. Here goes:
Left unto themselves, it’s a veritable Lord of the Flies here on a Saturday mornings with faint light streaming in windows brightening the winter-long dust and tiny hand prints left on the glass by children. They fill up literally every inch of the house during the winter time beginning from the time they wake up about 7 a.m., covering three levels with games of chase, wrestling, or with something less physical, the sound of carrying noise and blood-curdling screams. Most of the mischief breaks out about the time I come downstairs to write.
Fights typically involve a toy, usually a long-forgotten one that has temporarily gained one child’s attention, which then makes it the focus for the other two. Suddenly it becomes a centerpiece to be torn at and ripped from one another’s hands. This morning the object isn’t a toy at all, but a decidedly larger and fixed thing: a Dell computer that outweighs the children by in total body weight by 20-40 pounds. And yet the argue over it and who gets to play on www.StarFall.com, a pre-school-oriented web site that helps children learn to read and count through a series of fun stories and games. The children, all of them, have learned much from the site, either through the music or the helpful visual cues that draw them into the stories.
The problem is, it’s not so entertaining for parents, who more than likely know how to read if they have an operable computer system in the basement. Parents take their joy from the children’s learning while finding other tasks to focus their attention on — folding laundry, reading a book, etc. So the children, usually beginning with the eldest, fixate themselves around the pleather rolling chair and concentrate on the screen. At first, it’s an amiable learning environment where our five year-old, Annie, cycles through the games and the others offer little comment.
After awhile, though, the younger kids, Caroline and Charlie, begin to point things out, offer up their own solutions to the puzzles on screen and otherwise unsolicited advice. Even that is not too evasive, at first, but it persists and eventually the shared learning environment turns into outward hatred, a place where heads are rammed together, fingers twisted and fat baby cheeks pinched. Anger overcomes their faces in pursed lips, squinted eyes and wrinkled brows, and it begins with Annie’s sudden movement left or right, whichever direction the offender might be seated.
Our other children used to take it and be reduced to tears, but as of late they have learned to respond to these advances, biting and maiming in retaliation. I can’t say what makes them do it, other than cabin fever and Annie’s unrelenting will to “do it myself.” But invariably, regardless of the reason, I arrive too late, the momentary morning solitude shattered or at least spoiled and smudged like the row of windows along the front of the house.
