by Daisy Rain Martin
Today’s guest post is written by my no-mess girl, Daisy. We went to college together, ate together, toured together. She has always been a force to be reckoned with, back then a twig-thin white girl with a voice of a broad-bosomed African angel. Needless to say, she got the solos.
Daisy rants and hollers about injustice, then takes it head on. Several decades of friendship prove she is made of the best stuff: a loyal friend, teacher, and advocate for kids. But it wasn’t until I discovered her as an author that I was truly smitten. It’s a rare gift to see voice like hers on the page. Daisy’s effortless comedic timing in her storytelling (makes me mad with jealousy, but) thrills me. I laugh every time. I can read a piece for the twentieth time and still giggle.
I love some of Daisy’s earliest pieces best, such as this one written in 2008:
I’ve got my hands full. “Empress of our Universe” keeps me busy. When it comes to life with these two guys, I doubled down and won the whole enchilada. Life is good.
That’s not to say, however, that life does not present some interesting gliches. Those gliches turn into habits, and those habits become the way we live. One particular glich-turned-lifestyle in the Martin universe is that on a daily basis, someone with a penis is bound to begin a sentence with the fateful words, “Where is my…”
“Where is my. . . ?” [I hear thunder roaring in my brain, I can’t be held responsible for the outcome. I really can’t.] When I, Empress of the Universe, demanded that not another sentence start with these three words, I expected fear and trembling, but my boys simply amended their query to a sugar coated: “MOM, have you seen my…?” and “BABY, have you seen my…?”
Why is this happening? I, Empress of the Universe, know exactly where each soccer ball and jersey, set of car keys, and every personal article is at all times in this house because I am designed with a uterine homing device. It’s a proven medical fact.
My guys swear they’ve looked first before calling for my help, but I don’t believe them. Regardless of age or gender, you know what I’m talking about. Every mother has asked her children to fetch an item from another part of the house after providing a precise and unabridged explanation of where said item will be found.
“It’s in the kitchen cupboard to the right of the dishwasher, third drawer down, behind the hand towels.”
Point two milliseconds pass before it is announced, “I can’t find it.”
One Tuesday after this familiar scene played itself out, I made an agreement with my son. “Geoffrey,” I said feeling my face twisting into something hideous with warts and fangs, “if I ask you to bring me something and you can’t find it, (meaning I have to go get it myself), I get to beat you with whatever it was I asked for.”
Truth is, I suppose that if this is my cross to bear, I can manage. After all, I haven’t put gas in my car for several years. Or taken out the trash. I don’t mow the lawn, BBQ, pick up dog doo, or drive the truck while the camper is hitched. When I sit down to dinner, I am officially clocked out for the day. I don’t get up to do another gosh darn thing (unless it is to get something they can’t find.) Geoff clears the table, puts the dishes and leftovers away, and cleans up the kitchen while I sit and finish my glass of wine.
My husband gets up in the night to check every noise and brings me water when he returns to bed. If I can’t sleep, I can usually talk him into rubbing my face until I DO fall asleep about 90% of the time. On second thought, maybe 75% of the time. But, he pulls my car into the garage every night and brings it out for me every morning.
In light of all this, if my husband can’t find the nail clippers, and I happen to know that they’re in the top drawer of the sink in our bathroom toward the back to the right flanked by a hairbrush and slightly obscured by a bunch of Q-tips, I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to let him know that. If I have to find the shoe that the dog stole out of Geoffrey’s room and hid behind the dryer and I know it’s been there for four days, I could probably forego having to beat him with it.
When a person knows where everything is, she never has to ask, Where is my…? Kinda nice. One question I never have to ask is, “Where is my heart?”
It’s wherever my man and boy happen to be.