{the.wednesday.whistle}

dear Mikki and Katie…

i can smell a tantrum in the Walmart toy isle from across the store. the embarrassment that oozes through the mile long isles of worn concrete floors and potato chips in bulk can be felt by every cringing mother thankful that it is not their own child (this time). the elderly people shake their heads in colossal shame, thinking poorly of “the young people of today”, and the underpaid clerks brace themselves for a clean up of epic proportions after the lady, with her screaming babe on her hip, abandon her cart mid-experience. i wish i could say that neither of you two have blessed me with your own spectacular rendition of Midsummer Night Dream meets Macbeth in a toy tragedy, but alas, I have not been spared this all too familiar motherly experience. (hence my plague like avoidance of any toy isle….ever.) still, i have yet to blame a child for any such antics, even in my hot faced, ever so close to crying and/or my ready to severely discipline state of mind. because, girls, there is “too much”. of everything. and we all get wrapped up in the “too much” mentality.  i stepped on yet another “Littlest Pet Shop” walking down the hall sleepily in my bare feet on the way to the shrine (otherwise known as the coffee pot) this morning, and cursed all that is commercial and excessive in explicit, inappropriate detail. and while i feel that daddy and i don’t spoil you rotten, the mounting “i want this” comments coming from the other side of the noise picture box where a commercial presents yet another plastic thing i am bound to swear about has gotten out of hand. and yes, i had a lot of toys when i was a child. too many to count or even care about. but it’s even worse now because instead of just a couple isles of semi nicely made toys there are 12-24 isles of plastic stuff made for a dollar and sold for $14.99. (next week it will go on sale for $9.99 to make room for more and more and more and more). and by the time you guys have kids, there might be 24-50 isles of worrisome, dizzying, “too much”.  and while it may seem like i am standing on my soap box and preaching about the evils of toys, let me say that i don’t think they are evil at all. i love toys. i even love the Littlest Pet Shop animals that i curse on a semi-regular basis. what worries me, girls, is what you can’t find in those endless isles of mass production. and that is attention. and that is a simple conversation. and that is (most times) education. and that is the joy that comes from togetherness. and that is love. and while a toy may certainly BE loved, one-thousand of them can’t.

oh and this “too much” thing applies for us adults too. there is WAY “too much” of everything for us too…and it all makes me want to crawl into the 19th century sometimes (only with toilet paper and toilets because that is just good stuff there) when things were harder i’m sure, but there was less stuff and more to talk about.

all my love darlings,

p.s. daily mantra: “sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” {dr.seuss}