If the Book of Proverbs were written today, two things are certain. One is that this portion of the Bible would contain far fewer references to vines and grapes. The other is that the authors would surely have included some cautionary axioms dealing with summer vacation at home.
I am thinking along the lines of “A vacationing child asketh too often for videos; a prudent parent assigneth duties around the home.”
Or, “Happy is the family that joins a community pool; for woe betides the waterless.”
And definitely: “A wise woman kicketh her children outside after breakfast, lest they wallow in idleness, engage in mindless bickering, and drape themselves about her person so that she can’t get anything done.”
Had that last proverb existed and been taken to heart, I might not have found myself, on a recent summer day, trying to pay the household bills in the company of a roomful of querulous, lax-limbed children.
“I’m … dreaming …” sang a girl who was lying crosswise on an armchair, dangling her legs.
She raised her voice operatically. “Of a whiiiite … Christmas. …”
“Stop singing,” snapped her brother. Sprawled in a chair, he was feebly waving a tennis racquet. “It’s not nice to listen to,” he said, poking the racquet at a passing sister.
“Ow! Cut it out!” said the passing sister.
“It’s nicer than listening to you,” retorted the armchair chanteuse.
“Yes, I know, that’s why I don’t sing.”
“Guys, come on,” I said, failing to lift my eyes from my computer.
“… Just like the ones we used to knooooww. …”
“Shut up!”
“Don’t say shut up to your sister,” said a sister.
The smallest girl, being too young to suffer from ennui, was playing an imaginary game. “Where is your oil lump?” she asked an invisible friend.
“Oil lamp, not oil lump!” laughed the boy, his mood lifting briefly.
“I ain’t got no oil lump,” a girl said, hillbilly-style, from the depths of the sofa.
“The objects are gone! Better call the cops!” cried the smallest child, still engrossed in her game.
A pen flew across the room. “Ow!” someone yelped. “Sorry,” someone said. The boy put a cardboard box over his head. Sofa girl rolled on to her back and began humming. Armchair girl stood up, clipped a pedometer on to her shorts, and began running in place.
“Doo-doo-doo,” she sang. “Mummy, I’m exercising!”
“You’re a muggle,” the boy told the sister on the sofa.
“Don’t call me a muggle.”
“Well, you’re not a wizard, which makes you a muggle.”
“Children!” I burst out crossly. This was intolerable.
At that moment, an actual proverb flashed across my mind: “A wise woman builds up her house; a foolish one tears it down with her own hands.”
If it was anyone’s fault that the children were frittering away the day in indolence and squabbling, it was mine. “OK. Do half an hour of reading, and then I’ll take everyone for a swim.”
“Hurrah!” they cried, and dashed for their books.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
