Cucumbers, Rubbers, and Tehva

Here is how you traumatize S the Wondermaid--sex ed.

And here is how you play it off like those condoms were supposed to be in the toy box--Tehva.

But first a bit of background. We still enjoy the biweekly visits from S the Wondermaid who continues to astonish and amaze with her prowess in the kitchen, her kindness with the kids, and her thoroughness with the mop and bucket.

S's battle with the house is as never-ending as the quest for smarts undertaken daily by the Fantastic Four who darken my school room door each morning, which lends a lovely balance to my life. The house is like a mountain, stacked to its pinnacle with stones on the edge of tumbling over a precipice, threatening to take down the whole peak.

The Fantastic Four's battle with the daily regimen of reading, math, and thinking thinking thinking is contributing to this precarious peak because learning here in Oman while you are a teen apparently involves lots of eraser ash, crumpled tissues, half-chewed pencils, and tiny scraps of paper tossed onto the most immediate floor space. And it also involves extensive cutting, slicing, peeling, ripping, rubbing, and rolling. You know, just to keep it all fresh.

The scraps that result from all of these actions often end up tucked away in odd places--under the seats of the car, wrapped up on people's desks, and stuck in random containers. If the remnants are simply, say, flakes of paint, then S just gets on with things. But if the remnants are condoms? Well, then S pulls out the big guns.

When we returned from Jordan, we found that S had defrosted the freezer, deroached under the sink, cleaned the windows, bleached our socks, combed and primped the cats, and emptied Tehva's toy basket, scrubbing each item thoroughly. She then had replaced everything in its proper place, except for a small plastic tea pot. I found it sitting in a place of honor in the kitchen upon our return.

When I tried to remove it from its new showcase area, S lunged at me. "No! It is dirty! Do not touch that! I have boiled it and washed it with soap. But do not to touch it! I think you need to throw it. It is very dirty."

So I pulled back my hand like I had been burned because S has seen dirty in her day, and if she says this is dirty then it must be DISGUSTING. But no. It appeared to be the same blue plastic, moderately clean Fisher Price teapot that it had always been.

S lunged at me again. "No! Do you know what I found in there? THREE USED CONDOMS! Somebody in your house hid them there I think. I FOUND THEM AND SCRUBBED AND SCRUBBED! SO DIRTY! AND I PUT THAT POT IN BOILING WATER!"

The telling continued in this vein, cyclical in nature, peaking and then subsiding until it had been reduced to "Three condoms," and "Very dirty" along with frantic gestures.

And then it dawned on me. These were the absentee condoms--the ones that had gone missing during our sex ed unit when, in very American style, I went out and bought a box of condoms and a bag of cucumbers and let the kids have at it. Along the way, the kids also filled two giant white board with questions ranging from those of technicality to those of practicality. Tehva, being seven, was excluded from this event since she already has a horrible habit of blurting out the most inappropriate things and actually could have probably taught the unit anyhow. I nestled her in front of a Mr. Bean DVD and ignored her.

But the whole time I suspected that Tehva was lurking around the perimeter of the talk, and when I heard her running the water in the bathroom, I suspected that she was up to no good, since she, soap, and water are not friends.

And, indeed, poor S found the proof of Tehva's covert misdeed, shoved in the bottom of Tehva's beloved teapot.

When I confronted Tehva, she giggled and then laughed, pointing out that condoms make good balloons. When I explained to S, she giggled and giggled and giggled, but mostly she looked relieved. And when I reflected back on the whole sex ed talk, I had a sudden revelation as to why one-room school houses probably never tried to address sex.

Small children make talented condom thieves. And discarded play condoms make for an uncomfortable clean up crew. Just wait until we dissect those pigs!

The Effect of the Departure of S

This morning the horizon looked so dusky and grey that I convinced myself that it was not going to wait for tomorrow to rain. Then I opened the window to a blue sky. I think I need to wipe down the windows. I also need to scrub the toilets, sweep and mop the floor, remove the rubbish from the drive, fix the leaky faucet, hug the kids and hand them their breakfast with a smile, dust, vacuum, and make supper and the beds--EVERY DAY.

We are very much missing S the Wondermaid. She started asking us in September if we would be okay without her for six weeks as she was planning a trip to Sri Lanka to happen later in the fall. I scoffed and told her that of course we would be okay—not to be silly. However, now that we are actually living through those six weeks, I am eating my words—or I would be eating them if I could find the time and energy to cook them.

Having to come home on those two busy days during the week to a dirty house and another night of sandwiches? How did I do this for all those years of my adult life before I moved to the Gulf and became convinced that I needed domestic help? And how do I go back to managing my life independently now that S is gone?

In light of the window incident, I decided that I would begin to pick up the pieces of my grimy household at that moment by cleaning the driveway. Six a.m. seems an ideal time for such tasks and besides, the windows simply looked too daunting. And so, with cats in tow and brooms in hand, I headed out to the driveway.

November is the best time to come to Oman, I thought, trying to cheer myself to the fact that I had just swept up a half-chewed gecko carcass. “The breezes blow off the ocean and the air is clear and clean,” I muttered to myself as I scooped up a gigantic pile of dust, fig leaves, shriveled fruit peelings, cat poo, toilet paper clumps, and hair balls. When I found the two dead dragonflies at the base of a palm frond-pomegranate branch structure in the middle of whale rib bones, and the cats began snacking, I decided I was done with the driveway.

This is the point at which I decided I had had enough of driveway detritus

It rained last week which meant that our house flooded, but Tony and Tian were out when it happened and so we were down on manpower to sop up the flood waters and hang out the soggy towels. I rationalized this oversight by telling myself that in this environment the towels would dry just as fast on the floor as anywhere else. In addition, wet tiles make for excellent skating and damp towels are ideal for use as a door mat. Now, though, I picked them up and set them to dry on top of the clean clothes on the back porch.

This brought me to the tissue party on the floor, off in a corner where someone or something had emptied the contents of a box of Palace Tissues. The box itself had been turned into a wooden ship with straw cannons and its adversary, an old cereal box with iron (aluminum foil) sides and a turret, lay in the tissue detritus. Scooping up the remains of the battle brought me face-to-face with a smear of…what was that on the wall? Hoping that it was chocolate, I wet a towel and began to sponge the questionable mark only to discover a furtive message scribbled on one of the columns in pencil—I love…and then some indecipherable name—large print has led me to conclude that Tehva is the author, meaning that the name is either Louis or Zain. Totally 1D. I took grotesque pleasure in scrubbing away the spastic pencil marks.

And at the base of that same column? A collection of candy wrappers. That reminded me that I needed to get into the kitchen and trash the last of the Halloween candy since I have very bitchily put Tehva on a no-sugar diet in a desperate, last-ditch effort to salvage my sanity. The diet has been wildly successful in that instead of 15 temper tantrums a day she only has one, and she tries to slaughter one of her siblings only once every other day. This is progress.

Damp and slightly mildewy swimsuits hung, stale cat food swept from under the fridge, ant hills along the base of the stairs destroyed, carpets swept, rotten bananas stuck in the freezer, and counters wiped for the first time since S’s departure, I make a cup of tea and ponder the reality of the American life that will be ours again starting next year if all goes as planned.

Removed from this equation will probably be the mildewy swimsuits and, quite likely, the ant hills that form thrice weekly at the base of the steps, and I suspect I will no longer have to deal with a driveway filled with bizarre bits of other people’s lives. However, everything else that S deals with on a twice-weekly basis will once again be part of my collection of responsibilities.

And, like every other Gulf expat I know here who is looking at the possibility of returning to the home country, I ask myself frequently, Can I stand to return to “real life” and the losses it entails? No more annual air ticket, summer holiday time in Europe, domestic help, tax-free living, huge international community, nice salary, or cheap petrol. I can do it, but can I stand it?