Small Installations

Is it an installation or is it just a mess? En route to far west Texas, I collect a few grains worn off the rocks of everyday living that nearly blew away.

“Are you alright, Mom?” Traveling upstate from New York City, on a train along a river, Jean looked at me across a summer table and asked me twice. “Are you really alright, Mom?”
“Of course I’m alright.” I insisted, off guard.  I wondered if I had something on my face.  Had I accidentally revealed something she wasn’t meant to see?  “Do I not seem alright?”
“I dunno.  Train tickets, plane tickets, everything.  It’s a lot to keep up with.”  She shrugs her shoulders.  “Are you ok?”
I paused to collect this moment, one of the nicest things anyone I have lived with as a grown-up has said to me.  I was confused to hear it from a child.  “I’m fine, baby.”  I nodded.  “I’m absolutely fine.”  More nods.  “And it’s my job to be the grown up and take care of things and your job to be a kid.  Okay?” 
She agreed, looking back out the window, at the water and our reflection moving on it.  She’d moved on.  I wondered what damage I did to her as a solo, busy, frazzled writer making everything up as I go. 

Now Jean is wrapped in a towel, fresh out of the tub and awake past bedtime.  She crosses her ankles, leaning on the bed.  “I heard you talking to Daddy about how money is slow.”  She speaks quietly, intentionally.  “I don’t have to get ice cream anymore.” 
In the sparse bedroom, in the lamp light, dim and yellow, without her bracelets and her double ponytails, she is a worried child stepped out of the particulars of time. I pause to collect this moment too.  
“No, no, baby, no.  Ice cream is not at all what that conversation was about.  We are FINE. You don’t have to stop getting ice cream.” 
She doesn’t smile.  I kneel on the floor, hold her shoulders, put my forehead on hers, look in her eyes.  “We are FINE.  Better than fine.  We are so, so lucky.”  I mean that, firmly, as confounding as it is to live in a world where ice cream costs more than one hand of fingers. “You will NOT stop getting ice cream.  Deal?”  
A small affirmative from from her, wet bangs almost to her eyes.  There is no conversation she doesn’t soak up.  No matter what room, no matter what low tenor of voice, she hears everything.
“Put your pjs on,” I pat her fanny.   She disappears into the hallway.

“You need to start my college fund, Mom.” I’m working on my computer in bed. She is doing a French lesson on my phone beside me. 
“I’m on it already, Jean.” I don’t even look up.  Who is this tiny adult?  Is she worried about me all the time because I am exhibiting signs of needing to be worried about? 
“What are you going to do about that art installation in your room?” This is my latest ploy in dealing with piles of clothes, rinds of paper, scattered beads, the cup on the floor in the living room and the crumpled napkin beside it.  Is this something you arranged on purpose?  Does this go here?  Is the detritus of daily living beautiful or is this just a mess?  I somehow sound more like myself laughing about that than saying the mom things I hear come out of my mouth. We are going to be late. We have to go NOW! Put your socks on!  Brush your teeth NOW!  No, you cannot eat that and go to bed NOW.
“I’ll do it tomorrow. I promise.”  
I roll my eyes. “Where are you going to go to college, by the way?” 
Age seven, Jean considers the question.  She loves Indiana Jones, broke her arm trying to jump past the first and second monkey bars for the third rung, and has a galaxy of tiny ruddy brown freckles on her nose. 
“Raleigh,” she smiles.  

I think she really is happy when she says things like this. It tickles me so that I don’t tell her about how ridiculous this is, how restless she will be to leave or the new feelings that will fill her with longing.  I asked her what she wants to do for Christmas this year.  What we always do!  Where should we go this weekend?  Let’s stay home and invite friends over!  Once she even announced at the dinner table, “So far, I’ve had a really great life!”  We plan a for-now pretend trip to Paris; I dream of us spending summers there.  But I don’t dream of being away from our life, either.  I don’t dream an alternate.
“Look at this game, Mom.” She shows me the phone, giggling. “All ads. You know what I like about planes?”
“What?”  She wants to tuck under my arm but I’m typing.
“You’re too high up for ads.  You can play a game, but all these ads don’t get to the sky.”   
“You’re a nut.”  
I moved to pull the cover under her chin, but she’s out of bed now, climbing, fast a squirrel. One foot on the edge of the lower windowsill, one pushing a soft valley in the covers, one thin arm outstretched to the top of the window frame.
“Back in bed!” The mother tone is unavoidable, though I’m watching with interest.
“I just need to check something.”  She touches each in a line of small, colored bouncy balls she has installed above the window, on the top lip of its frame.  And a red whistle as finale.  She placed them there carefully weeks ago, requested they stay there. I have no idea why.  
“Mom, do you ever think about thinking?”  She doesn’t look down.
“A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about thinking. Meditation. Philosophy.  Religion.”  
“I like thinking about thinking.” She adjusts a colored ball just barely. “Mom, what is the point to life?” 
How did we get to this so quickly? Santa Claus first, straight to the big stuff.
(“Is it just you giving me presents or is Santa real?"
“I don’t know, baby.  What do you think?” looking back to her in her car seat, to see what kind of answer is requested. 
“Tell me the truth,” she insists firmly.  “Don’t LIE.”
“It’s me, baby.  But the spirit is real!  And he maybe once was alive and real,” I said gently, positively, a consolation prize in my voice.
“WHY DO PEOPLE LIE TO KIDS? The Easter Bunny. The Tooth Fairy.  The whole thing!  Why do people lie to kids??”) 
Tonight, I answer as honestly as I can. “I don’t know what the point of life is, Jean.  But I think it’s about love.  What do you think?” I sound cagey and full of consolation prizes I don’t have.
She doesn’t seem to understand the bigness of the question.  “I think it’s family.  And having fun.”  She’s back beside me, serious about laughter, serious about getting under my arm now that the computer is put away.
“That sounds right,” I tell her.  And it does.
“Mom, if we were in a plane could we see the Eiffel Tower?  Does it go all the way into the clouds?” 
“Some nights. I think some nights it does.” Some nights, I ask her if she wants to say thank you to Mother Nature for the day we have had.  Most of the time, she says “no thanks” the way she might if I offered her a piece of cardboard chewing gum. But every so often, she will close her eyes and mouth some inaudible thing on warm breath.   

This night, I will think about thinking, an inaudible whisper at the edge of sleeping, a small object installation of daily detritus on the windowsill of my mind.  Whatever the point of life is, let it be more of this, more of this.  May I not be so frazzled, may there be a point to why I am frazzled.  May I start a college savings account soon and take her to Paris.  May love grow. For everyone.  Maybe please can I have one more year before she asked how babies are made.
“Mom, can you touch the Eiffel tower from a plane?”
“Jean, go to sleep.”