Saturday

With the agony of the unanswered e-mail question behind me, and the acceptance of a New Way of Looking at It, I feel so much better. With a little help, the house is clean and I am welcoming in spring. I wrote on our kitchen chalkboard, "Hello, Spring!" which someone promptly wrote "I Hate You!" underneath. First I thought the person who wrote it hates me, but then she explained it is spring she hates because spring plants her allergic symptoms firmly into her head to flourish as the fresh warm air and sunshine nurture those symptoms into unbearable misery.
I always hated the feeling of normalcy and routine, especially with Saturdays when I was growing up. Weekends meant cleaning, laundry, and going to the grocery store. The smell and look of the gritty Comet cleaning powder we had to use to scrub the bathroom was the color of toothpaste, and the smell hurt my head. There was something so unbearable about the whole routine of Saturdays, especially the cleaning and going to the grocery store. It seemed to take forever, and it was usually gray and rainy and miserable. And I'm sure I looked at all the good stuff I wanted that I knew I couldn't get, like snack cakes and potato chips and soda and gum and candy bars. In the cereal aisle, with its perky colorful rainbow loop cereal and sugar smacks, and a long string of other untouchables, my sister and I had the chance to choose between Cheerios, Grape-Nuts, and Raisin Bran. If it were a cereal we were bringing home, neither the first nor the second ingredient could be "sugar." That significantly limited the possibilities. Now, of course, our children have to suffer through the same wholesomeness. Hopefully it will carry on down the line indefinitely.