Wat Dis?
“Wat dis?” My daughter asks, pointing up at me.
“My shirt?”
“Dis Mama Marie!” she says.
“Yup,” I nod.
“Wat dis?”
“The wall.”
“Wat dis?”
“The clock on the wall.”
“Wat dis?”
“The numbers on the clock.”
“One two three four!” she exclaims, giddy over the marvel of numerical order.
“That’s right, Isla!” Where on earth is my voice getting that enthusiasm? I step cautiously away. Will she go back to pretending she is tiptoeing in puddles of water? An instant of silence, and then:
“Wat dis?” her 16 month old sister echoes, pointing at a picture in her book.
“A donkey,” I sigh.
“Donkey!” Gaia repeats, satisfied for a good third of a second.
“What do you do with all those questions when you’re tired at the end of the day?” my sister-in-law asks. I shrug. I am not a patient parent by any means. But for all my eye rolls, Isla’s incessant querying doesn’t actually bother me. Odd, because silence is my drug of choice these days.
***
“Wat dis?” Isla asks, entering her baby sister’s room.
“It’s called vomit. Gaia threw up. Everywhere,” I tell her, my voice sarcastically sing-song. My husband takes one look and fills the tub without comment. While he deals with vomit laundry, I wash her hair three times to clear the smell, and then change the water so that her sister can join her. One of them—I’m not sure which because I happened to be turning my back for one irresponsible second—promptly poops in the tub.
I spend the rest of the day armed with a thermometer, doling out medicine at an alarming rate, and taking the feverish baby’s cup out of the recovered toddler’s mouth. Is it reasonable to teach a three year old to do her own laundry? I wonder. I long for a distant reality when my children can bathe themselves.
Maybe it’s that with every tick of the depressing clock, another item on the to-do list vanishes like Cinderella’s magic pumpkin carriage at midnight. Maybe it’s that I’m so tired, even the facial recognition feature on my phone won’t work. Sorry, I can’t see a face behind the mammoth bags under your eyes, the locked screen seems to say. Or maybe it’s just that both girls won’t stop wailing, their coughs sound theatrically dramatic, and this particular pack of Pampers seems to have a serious design flaw.
Whatever the reason, I need a minute. I sink down in the dark behind my bed where the girls might not find me for a few minutes, and I think of Gregor Samsa. Gregor who? Let’s go back in time a bit and I can explain.
It’s the beginning of my freshman semester, and I am taking a literature course as an elective. We start with Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, a short story in which Gregor Samsa wakes up to find that he has turned into a giant cockroach. My 19-year old self was baffled by this book. By all accounts, Gregor Samsa was a stand-up guy. He went to work every day, cared for his family, supported his parents, did all the right things day after day. That’s far more than I could say about myself. What on earth had he done to merit his insectiled fate? Kafka’s story irked me.
To the credit of my college professor, it took me years to unpack The Metamorphosis. I’m still grappling with it. It has something to do with not just going through the motions of your life, which is harder than it seems. When I step back and think about the life I have, there is nothing but gratitude. Wonder even. But wonder can be a slippery thing to hold onto when your hands are busy washing vomit hair.
And that’s when I realize the magic of my daughter’s questions. Wat dis? And dis? And dis and dis? Isla’s not looking to the future or the past. She’s not escaping onto a phone when her Mama is being … ornery. She’s certainly not just going through the motions. Not even the clock on the wall has lost its wonder.
***
Early one evening, the oldest throws her watercolor paints onto the baby’s head in a moment of anger, and both children dissolve into a puddle of misery.
“It’ll get better,” my husband says aloud, scooping one of them into his arms. “They’ll grow up.”
They will, and it’s a comforting thought. And yet, my eyes water at the idea.
Gregor Samsa had a full life, but he never stopped to notice it. When 6 o’clock rolled around, he was probably thinking, God, not again! I just cleaned up those magna tiles! Maybe if I hide under my bed for a bit like a giant cockroach they’ll stop crying on their own. Is it bedtime yet? Or wait, did I say Gregor Samsa? I may have meant myself.
I am a new learner in this world of parenthood and I still mostly fumble around. But I’m here for it. I promise. Do you hear that, Kafka? I get it now. If this life is a gift, than I am always a recipient. If it’s just an eternal to-do list, then I am a slave.
Wat dis?
This—the scraggly lines on the chalkboard that Gaia scratches out. “Draw bird!” she says, pointing proudly at her scribbles in a baby voice. This—the now wilted violets still clenched in Isla’s tight fist after our walk. This—the half-eaten bowl of rice that I am doomed to finish. This—the stray cats that crowd around the sliding door every morning while Gaia spills their food onto the pavement outside.
I’ll never be a Zen-Buddhist, but I can still look at my life in wonder. Like Isla, I can turn my days into mundane treasure hunts, taking the banal moments and holding them up to the light. Those sleeping eyelids, the girls laughing together in the bath, the precise way my husband folds laundry, Isla’s love for her great-grandmother, the hard-won fulfillment of writing. And, because this is our life right now, the tantrums and vomit sheets too.
Guest post written by Marie Murray, who has more interests than she'll ever be able to pursue. Although her background is in international politics, she began writing fiction as a way to observe the world with fresh eyes and a good dose of humor. Originally from New Jersey, Marie now lives in the mountains of Lebanon with her family where she receives daily visits from a growing number of stray cats. You can connect with Marie on Instagram.