amelia's plum

My daughter Oona is not one for moderation. She feels things pretty intensely and makes no bones about letting you know just what she's feeling. Last night she quickly became Oona the fierce when I wouldn't go upstairs with her when she had to pee. Really this is my own fault, because I did gut the half bath on the main floor two years ago, and though it's all newly dry-walled now, I've yet to get a plumber to put new fixtures in because I want to make it a full bath, in order to make my house more sale worthy when I put it on the market, but money is tight. So it sits, the empty tease of tantrums deferred, if only I'd commit to getting it finished. I don't understand why my children don't like to go upstairs to pee alone. So Owen is on the phone with his Dad and Oona is hopping up and down on the stairs, which are really quite steep and I still want to carpet them with a runner but it's another thing on the house to do list. Anyhow I'm convinced anyone, child or adult, would die if they fell down my stairs, so I don't like to see stair related tantrums. I told Oona she was going up stairs to pee get a quick shower and then bed because when she does this on a friday at 7:00 it usually indicates that the week has exhausted her. I spent the next half hour enduring her screaming protests, on the toilet, off the toilet, hopping mad naked but for her socks, trying to be hopping mad in the shower but that's another potential disaster so I warned her not to hop in the tub, hopping up and down on the bath mat trying to run away from me but she was soaking wet and we've got hard hard tile in the upstairs bathroom, a horrible peach color to match the 1950s? tub and sink, the state of that bathroom makes my heart sink (oh gosh, if I get started on analyzing the myriad things to fix in my house it literally becomes a house of cards that collapses in front of me). Finally, somewhere in the middle of my drying her hair, her cries that were harmonizing with the blower dryer softened and then stopped. After that she said she was no longer sad, hugged me and I got a book to read to her in bed. I slathered her hands and arms with lotion and put a pair of my socks on her arms. We read the book, I lay next to her a couple minutes scratching her back and head, gave her a kiss goodnight and she was out less than five minutes later. I admire her resolve to commit so fully to everything she experiences; anger, joy, sleep, life.

Owen and Oona's school has a holiday store that is always filled with dollar store cast offs and I stress to them not to buy me anything! But they always do. I got a lavender soap from Owen that I had to pitch (don't tell him) because it was so strong I could smell it in the hallway, and it didn't really smell like lavender and every since my pregnancies I'm super smell sensitive. Oona got me two tiny worry dolls that are pinned to a business card that tells the legend of them. And every so often, if I'm having a bad day or have a big test, presentation, crazy amount of school related paperwork to do, she tucks them under my pillow for me. And one night she arranged a tiny arsenal of her toys at the top of the stairs to greet me before I went to bed. And sometimes she'll just come up to me and clasp my face with her two lovely little plump hands to give me a kiss right on the mouth. I named Oona after Charlie Chaplin's wife, Oona O'Neill, the it girl of her time who, unfortunately, in spite of her happy marriage did not have any easy life and died from complications of alcoholism. But my Oona is much more like Oonagh in the story of Finn MacCoul and his fearless wife. Because in that Irish folk tale Oonagh is the resourceful, clever wife who saves the day, and I have no doubt that my Oona is capable of just such feats of greatness, even if she doesn't have the silent 'gh' on the end of her name.