**in an earlier post i described getting in touch with old friends and sending them a quilt i'd made for their son. a few weeks after i sent it, Eli sent me this letter...**
Ms. Y-von,
Mendel loves the quilt you made him so much that he likes to take it around with him sometimes. He sleeps with it every night. Mendel is also enraptured with experimentation--not in a Sonic Youth or Destroy All Monsters kind of way, but in an "I wonder would happen if..." mode. When you put those two things together, it can (and did) get a little ugly.
I'll preface today's mayhem with a little background. It's not so much that Mendel finds trouble, it's that trouble swirls around him in a cloud of giddy puckishness. For example, Mendel is a runner. When he spots an unlocked door to the outside, he turns the knob, pulls the door and he takes off. This has caused a couple of insanely worrisome freak-outs where we turn our backs for a second and Mendel has opened the front door and run off to take his act on the road. This same free-spiritedness leads him to frequently color on things, put odd objects in the refrigerator and love, love, love to play with the toilet.
We've tried to create obstacles to his mischief in the hopes of slowing him down, but alas the kid is much smarter than either of us. The front door problem is the rare problem that we seemed to have solved. To date he hasn't realized that he can pull a stool over to the front door and climb up to unlock the deadbolt we've become religious about locking. The other problems though just seem unavoidable. We try to put those things that can damage, cut, color or stain up high and out of reach, but with three older siblings, these prized objects are frequent finds. He shadows his brothers and sister like a ninja and as soon as a marker has been left out, in the blink of an eye, he's written all over himself, the floor, and the walls of at least three and a half rooms. We're attentive parents, but the kid can create a mess faster than a Chicago road crew.
Interior doors are also a lost cause. The child proofing industry has produced these well-intentioned little guards that clip over a doorknob and sit loosely around it so that unless you know to grip the metal through the holes in it, you're stuck scratching at the other side like a lonesome schnauzer. After a couple of days, Mendel figured out that the solution wasn't twisting, it was pulling them apart...and the boy won again. We also installed toilet lid locks because he has an incurable interest in the porcelain pool. Somehow, he's managed to figure those locks out as well. As a result, things tend to find their way into the toilet that shouldn't be there.
This morning I walked into the downstairs bathroom and what should I see neatly stuffed into the toilet, but his favorite quilt. Historically Mendel has only managed to throw small objects in the toilet. This time really went for the brass ring this and stuffed in the whole quilt. Perhaps he was curious about absorbency. I suppose we'll never know. What we do know is that as gross as that was, after a couple of thorough machine washings, the quilt was as good as new.
I can't promise this won't happen again. The little curly-headed demon with curiously quick mischief making skills is fickle. One minute he's lovingly carrying around his favorite quilt, lying on it, or wrapping himself in it like a burrito. The next he's flipped and is skillfully soaking up the toilet water. So in case you sensed the abuse of your lovely gift or heard its psychic, disgusted wail, I just wanted to be clear--it's not because he doesn't love it.
I hope all is well.
Eli
Ms. Y-von,
Mendel loves the quilt you made him so much that he likes to take it around with him sometimes. He sleeps with it every night. Mendel is also enraptured with experimentation--not in a Sonic Youth or Destroy All Monsters kind of way, but in an "I wonder would happen if..." mode. When you put those two things together, it can (and did) get a little ugly.
I'll preface today's mayhem with a little background. It's not so much that Mendel finds trouble, it's that trouble swirls around him in a cloud of giddy puckishness. For example, Mendel is a runner. When he spots an unlocked door to the outside, he turns the knob, pulls the door and he takes off. This has caused a couple of insanely worrisome freak-outs where we turn our backs for a second and Mendel has opened the front door and run off to take his act on the road. This same free-spiritedness leads him to frequently color on things, put odd objects in the refrigerator and love, love, love to play with the toilet.
We've tried to create obstacles to his mischief in the hopes of slowing him down, but alas the kid is much smarter than either of us. The front door problem is the rare problem that we seemed to have solved. To date he hasn't realized that he can pull a stool over to the front door and climb up to unlock the deadbolt we've become religious about locking. The other problems though just seem unavoidable. We try to put those things that can damage, cut, color or stain up high and out of reach, but with three older siblings, these prized objects are frequent finds. He shadows his brothers and sister like a ninja and as soon as a marker has been left out, in the blink of an eye, he's written all over himself, the floor, and the walls of at least three and a half rooms. We're attentive parents, but the kid can create a mess faster than a Chicago road crew.
Interior doors are also a lost cause. The child proofing industry has produced these well-intentioned little guards that clip over a doorknob and sit loosely around it so that unless you know to grip the metal through the holes in it, you're stuck scratching at the other side like a lonesome schnauzer. After a couple of days, Mendel figured out that the solution wasn't twisting, it was pulling them apart...and the boy won again. We also installed toilet lid locks because he has an incurable interest in the porcelain pool. Somehow, he's managed to figure those locks out as well. As a result, things tend to find their way into the toilet that shouldn't be there.
This morning I walked into the downstairs bathroom and what should I see neatly stuffed into the toilet, but his favorite quilt. Historically Mendel has only managed to throw small objects in the toilet. This time really went for the brass ring this and stuffed in the whole quilt. Perhaps he was curious about absorbency. I suppose we'll never know. What we do know is that as gross as that was, after a couple of thorough machine washings, the quilt was as good as new.
I can't promise this won't happen again. The little curly-headed demon with curiously quick mischief making skills is fickle. One minute he's lovingly carrying around his favorite quilt, lying on it, or wrapping himself in it like a burrito. The next he's flipped and is skillfully soaking up the toilet water. So in case you sensed the abuse of your lovely gift or heard its psychic, disgusted wail, I just wanted to be clear--it's not because he doesn't love it.
I hope all is well.
Eli
2 comments:
What a fantastic letter. Your quilts lead fascinating lives. I hear one was recently sat upon at a cemetery picnic...
This sentence made me snort at my computer screen: "Perhaps he was curious about absorbency."
And bless your pal for the Destroy All Monsters reference. They didn't by any chance attend All Tomorrow's Parties at UCLA in 2002, did they?
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