It served me no purpose to get upset the day my daughter sent my mother’s Tiffany lamp crashing to the floor from the place I had set it while having the dining room wired to accommodate it.  When she saw what she had done, she very sinserely said, “Sorry” and continued on her way back to the living room to watch her cartoons.  While I was no more pleased to be rid of the beautiful and expensive possession of my late mother after hiring someone to rewire the room than I was to sweep up the broken glass, but I was thrilled to see my daughter’s expression free from the fear that I would have surely felt at her age if I had broken something belonging to my mother with her standing right there.  The irony of the moment was not lost on me.  Thoughts of another time, while moving into the new house, I heard a series of tiny crashes from the moving van which I found out several minutes later had been my entire set of china which broke one piece at a time from where one of the kids had set the box that contained it before going in the house; and when it tipped on its side at the top of the ramp, the pieces slid down one at a time, waiting to crash until they hit the pavement below.  How considerate of them to be so agonizingly patient.  I was surprised at my own lack of reaction to their loss, pleased to see the kids were pitching in to help, regardless of how bad they may have been at it.  The broken china was the first of many broken things to be thrown away since we moved to this house and I’m pleased that the garbage men here are not nearly as particular as those from our previous address.

There I had to separate my earthly possessions by chemical makeup as the children destroyed them.  My broken bottle collection belonged in one bin, my classic record collection belonged in another, my expensive computer and stereo equipment belonged in still another.  Things are much simpler here, as the garbage men take pretty much anything I care to leave for them.  I sometimes think I could drag a body rolled in a carpet to the curb and it would not be questioned as long as I did it on Monday or Thursday; and if the kids keep breaking everything I own, that may be just what I do.
Another day, I was going by the living room and stopped to listen to see what the kids were doing to keep them so quiet for so long and, judging by the conversation, they were watching Finding Nemo with their father, “How come no one ever comes along with a little net and takes you guys away?  We must be swimming in the wrong place, huh?”  Smiling at my husband’s twisted humor as the boys groaned and pelted him with popcorn, thinking that I don’t mind vacuuming that kind of mess.  
But today, since it was my birthday, I was treated to the early morning sounds of my family and the familiar noises they make.  Without having to see them, I could picture exactly what each of them were doing, where they were, and the expressions on their faces.  My husband walking past our five-year-old in the hall, obviously noting the usual handful of used straws that our middle son likes to collect, forbidding anyone to throw them away, “Does this mean that we could have saved all that money at Christmas and your birthday and have just given you straws?”  
The little boy blows him a kiss, singing “Noooooooo…”, and keeps walking.  He fancies himself quite the singer and sings more than he talks.    
“Everything’s an opera with you.”  His father sang his reply as he kept walking, balancing a plate and coffee pot, circumventing various obstacles which used to grace the toy store shelves, but now litter his home, and I picture him contently shaking his head with that defeated smile of fatherhood.  Rounding a corner, stopping to knock loudly on a door, “Wake up…BARRELS.”   Obviously my birthday wasn’t quite enough to cancel garbage day.  
My younger daughter was reassigned garbage detail as the former jobs she did had things we still wanted disappearing, and we didn’t care about garbage disappearing, so it was the perfect job for her.  Now she gets paid to make garbage disappear twice a week.  ”I’m up.”
“Hey, Dad.”  
Encountering his older daughter shortly after he tried waking up his ten year old, my husband asked, “Have you seen your mother yet this morning?  I just fixed her breakfast in bed, but she’s not there.”  
His daughter’s wry reply, “No, but I’ve tasted your cooking.  Maybe she’s hiding.”  
“Nice.  Very nice.  Remember it’s your mother’s birthday today.”  
“How can I forget?  She’s been reminding us all every ten minutes all week long to sing ‘Happy Ten Days…’, Happy Nine Days…’.”  
“Well, at her age, it’s probably the short-term memory going.  Try to be patient.”  
“She’s younger than you, Dad.”  
An exaggerated impersonation was his reply as he continued his search, “She’s younger than you, Dad.”  His voice got louder and filled the house as he continued, “She’s a lousy ten days younger.  You’d think it was ten years to listen to her talk.”  
It was apparently time for me to stop listening and start talking,  ” HA!!!  Like you listen to me talk.”  I was just finishing changing the baby and came out of his bedroom holding a dirty diaper and a small pair of pajamas to match.  ”I hear you fixed my birthday breakfast, since I AM A WHOLE TEN DAYS YOUNGER THAN YOU, but, as you see, your son already fixed me something special.”  
“Oooh, brownies”, he joked as he looked at the diaper.  ”Your smarty-pants daughter has implied that my cooking tastes somewhat similar to that.”  
Looking at my daughter, “You swear too much.”  
“The hell I do.”  
Not to be left out, her father continued, “Movie quotes now.  Your son sings everything, until I feel I’m part of an off-key opera, and you two are always enacting John Wayne movies.”  
“That’s simply not true, Dad.  We do Hitchcock, too.  And don’t forget Stephen King movies, because sometimes being a bi…”  
“Ah-ah-ah-ah!”
“You don’t let me have any fun.”
“Oooh, I saw that coming from a mile away.  I know your mother’s favorite quote.”  
“Oh, no you don’t.  You’ve never seen the movie which contains my favorite quote, I’m sure.”  
“I find that hard to believe as I’ve seen every movie ever made.”  
“Ever see ‘The Corn is Green’ with Bette Davis?”  
“Okay, you got me there.  I should have known it would be from one of those moth eaten, crusty, dusty, moldy, oldie, black and white things you call entertainment.”  
“Ah spoken like a true, big, ugly buffoon.”  Never passing up an opportunity to tease him, I continued, “No, it has nothing to do with our wedding picture.  As I was saying, the younger of two female school teachers asks the older one, Bette’s character, why she never married.  Bette replies, ‘I’ve never been in a room with a man for more than fifteen minutes without wanting to box his ears’.” 
As his daughter laughed, he feigned indignant.  “Why don’t you send off another one of those manuscripts?  I would like to finish papering the guest bathroom and we could use some more of those rejection notices.”  
“That’s big talk coming from someone who never set foot in an English classroom.  You’re just jealous I know how to write more than my name.”  
“Well maybe they’d accept some of your writing if you quit that Stephen King – Erma Bombeck combo genre thing.”  
“Genre?  You learned a new word.  I’m so proud.  Kids, your father was nosing around the reference section again.  Make sure he didn’t circle any more dirty words in the dictionary.”  
“Okay children…play nice.”  My daughter’s maturity surpassing my own both pleased and irritated me.  
“You’re too straight to be my child.”  
“You’re too weird to be my mother.”  
Turning my attention back to her father, “All right, where’s the crappy breakfast you made me?  And I’ve been up for over an hour now and no one has sung to me yet.”  
An exaggerated, operatic version of Happy Birthday was started by my husband in a good-natured, albeit loud tone of voice and was shortly joined by all five children.  It was horrible and beautiful at the same time.