{"id":1381,"date":"2018-12-06T15:43:18","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T20:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/?p=1381"},"modified":"2019-06-07T14:48:55","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T14:48:55","slug":"about-the-aftermath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/about-the-aftermath\/","title":{"rendered":"About the Aftermath"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Four generations turned up at our family Thanksgiving table this year, a memorable time, indeed.\u00a0 Seated with honor at one end of the table was my 87-year-old mother, now bearing the title our uncle used to call the OLM (Oldest Living Member).\u00a0 At the opposite end in an attached baby seat perched our youngest addition, who clocked in at the six-month mark the week before the holiday.\u00a0 Scattered in between were two generations of adults and my very energetic grandchildren, seven and five.<\/p>\n

My sister and her husband were our hospitable and relaxed hosts, accommodating this chaos with admirable ease.\u00a0 I rang up a day or two later to say thanks and check in, imagining the Aftermath. \u00a0\u201cWe had such a blast having everyone,\u201d she said cheerfully, \u201cthough we couldn\u2019t believe the wreck left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ah, yes.\u00a0 Small children in the house, and an adult party to boot, and the wreck left behind.\u00a0 The Aftermath is the unsung verse in the folksong of grandparenting, the thing you forget to imagine when you dream of the arrival of the little varmints and look forward to their presence at these events. We couldn\u2019t love them more, of course, but their presence changes things, and that\u2019s just a fact.<\/p>\n

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Three of our four generations at Thanksgiving<\/p><\/div>\n

Before I stagger into trouble here, I offer a hasty clarification. The baby exuded charm and good nature while family members jostled for the privilege of minding her, and her two cousins were cheerfully kept occupied by a succession of doting great aunts and uncles, behaving as well as any children their age could at such a gathering.\u00a0 All parents involved are responsible and attentive adults, so the Aftermath did not spring from egregious lack of supervision.\u00a0After seven-plus years in this grandparenting game, I\u2019ve learned the Aftermath is not necessarily correlated to the behavior of the zoo inhabitants.\u00a0 It\u2019s just what happens when kids are around, even when the kids are well-coached to clean up afterward.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s examine a recent installment. \u00a0Buddy and Sis spent the day before Thanksgiving with me, school being out but their parents working.\u00a0 The day\u2019s activities left enough evidence behind that an astute observer, though not present, could probably still re-create our schedule.\u00a0 We began with art projects for the Thanksgiving hosts and other relatives and were favored with excellent output.\u00a0 (Aftermath:\u00a0 tiny construction-paper triangles on chair seats and floor, broken crayons heaped in centerpiece bowl, black marker streaks on tabletop where G-ma amateurishly failed to provide appropriate table covering.\u00a0 Luckily, some good table oil erased these with ease later.). We moved on to baking peanut-butter cookies for the Thanksgiving repast, which happily earned good reviews from the customers.\u00a0 (Aftermath:\u00a0Invisible sugar grains that overflowed onto kitchen hardwoods and mysteriously stuck to shoe despite repeated attempts to wipe up; bits of peanut butter on the corkscrew handle, and no, I didn\u2019t serve wine to the underage bakers; a measuring spoon that fell into the dog\u2019s water bowl.). Get the picture?<\/p>\n

And how to address the Aftermath?\u00a0 One does not want to avoid life-enriching opportunities with the littles, so over time, certain survival strategies emerge.\u00a0 Just when I start to get these things right, the kids will doubtless outgrow them, but at my house, a few key steps have kept my nose just above the Aftermath waterline.<\/p>\n

First, begin with essentials only.\u00a0 Before exhaustion triumphs over motion and you collapse on the nearest horizontal surface, seal and store any open food items.\u00a0 No one wants cherished memories sullied by a parade of invading ants.\u00a0 Check the floor for objects that might impede safe progress to the bathroom or the kitchen sink.\u00a0 You might feel like you\u2019ve been knocked on your butt, but it shouldn\u2019t be because you tripped on a loose shoe or skidded on an errant piece of melting ice.\u00a0 Establish the visible presence of pets, verifying none are locked in a hall bathroom or hiding desperately deep under a guest bed.\u00a0 These things done, everything else can wait, except perhaps the rejuvenating cocktail.<\/p>\n

The compulsive among us will think they could not sleep until the now-quiet homeplace is restored to total order, and to them I say, have at it. \u00a0Just don\u2019t look down your nose at us Aftermath veterans until you\u2019ve been there.\u00a0 Trust me.<\/p>\n

Then we progress to the next day.\u00a0 After a few hours sleeping the slumber of the near-dead, the kind usually available only to marathon runners, Olympic competitors and pre-school teachers, you can begin anew.\u00a0Some key strategies here:\u00a0 Essential functional spaces, like kitchen counters and bathroom floors, require priority attention for established routine to continue.\u00a0Clearing those prevents the spreading of detritus elsewhere.\u00a0 (See sugar example above.) These things accomplished, the rest is simple:\u00a0 Get to it as you can.\u00a0 And learn to live with an updated definition of \u201corderly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this approach pragmatic, or just lazy?\u00a0 Can we accept the lackadaisical, or should proper home management require that immediate SWAT-style restoration after every invasion?\u00a0 Everyone must make their own determination, but here’s what I think:\u00a0 I like the Aftermath.\u00a0 I love a pile of worn crayons, a messy stack of picture books, those paper triangles scattered on the floor under the table (though sugar on the shoe soles stretched the point slightly).\u00a0While I generally favor reasonable order, the Aftermath is a sidewalk artist\u2019s freeform sketch of the human energy that generated it.\u00a0 It makes the heart swell a tad and illustrates time you can\u2019t get back. It helps you remember, like a scar on your knee from that fall on the desert hike, or a scrape on your car door from a guardrail you skimmed, luckily, while yielding to an approaching tractor on a narrow, mountainside road in rural France.<\/p>\n

I remember as a child arising early on Saturday mornings after my parents had entertained on the previous evening. The Aftermath was usually a few crackers or nuts on a forgotten plate, maybe a couple of overlooked cocktail glasses left on sofa tables, little whiffs of fragrant bourbon still floating above the pools of melted ice they held.\u00a0 The \u00a0aroma didn\u2019t tempt me to steal a sip in those long-ago days, but even then, I knew instinctively that it must have been a good party.<\/p>\n

So, before I sweep or wipe it away like a chalk picture hosed off the pavement by a rainstorm, I putter around in the Aftermath a bit, savoring thoughts of fellowship, chuckling over what put it there.\u00a0 It usually makes a great story, later.<\/p>\n

Clean up when you get around to it.\u00a0 The next Aftermath will come along soon enough.\u00a0 If you are lucky.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7634.JPG\"\"IMG_7638.JPG\"<\/p>\n

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Four generations turned up at our family Thanksgiving table this year, a memorable time, indeed.\u00a0 Seated with honor at one end of the table was my 87-year-old mother, now bearing the title our uncle used to call the OLM (Oldest Living Member).\u00a0 At the opposite end in an attached baby seat perched our youngest addition, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[88,89,90,91],"class_list":["post-1381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grandkids","category-humor","tag-children-and-parties","tag-family-generations","tag-party-cleanup","tag-thanksgiving-celebrations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}