Home Is Where the Fart Is

Had a little scatological childhood memory today.

It was an image of my mother standing in my grandmother’s kitchen. And she was telling me, “Sometimes, when you’re on vacation, you don’t poop as often as you do at home.”

A mighty maternal pearl of wisdom, no?

It came back to me this morning when the girls and I stumbled into the house. It was barely 11AM, but we were exhausted, starved for lunch, and supremely sick of what we were wearing and each other.

On our way back from the airport we’d dropped Mark off at work, and I wasn’t sure which of us had it worse. Me, still with the kids and operating on a migraine-tauntingly slim night’s sleep? Or Mark, having to utilize his brain for the day, and requiring socially-acceptable breath? (He, having informed me earlier on our flight, that my breath was “not its best.” Causing me in my delirium, to throw my head back and laugh wildly, no doubt further distributing my foul oral odor. My apologies to the passengers of Flight 817.)

So then, back in the house after eight days absent. I tossed some drive-thru burgers at the kids and humped our nine—yes NINE—items of luggage (the beer didn’t explode!) into the house. Then, I set the girls free to reacquaint themselves with their toys, their books, their bedrooms’ dust bunnies.

Eventually Paige scooted over to where I was sorting laundry. A malodorous Paige. And I realized that all those irregularly-timed and unusual-food laden meals she’d eaten throughout our trip, had made their long-overdue exit diaper-ward. Perhaps, I couldn’t help but think, due to Paige’s return to the familiar, comfortable setting of our home.

Anyway, more on our hi-jinx in Minnesota once I wash my hair in this time zone, channel the energy of a not-too-old-for-this 26-year-old mother, and forage for milk and other unfrozen foods for my hungry, hyperpooping children.

I’m nearly too tired to tell for sure, but it seems like it’s good to be home.