mess.

i guess in a way, we've always sort of had a room dedicated to messes. whose soul purpose was to be designated, catastrophe. in the white house, it was the room across from my dad's office. i remember calling it the play room... there were bookshelves full of things that i never cared about, boxes, buried treasure. and of course, toys. lots and lots of toys. in tennessee it was every room. but mostly the walkway by our front door. no one ever used it, so it was safe to put junk there. and here... it's the porch. caleigh's play-palace.

i used the play room quite often as a child. there was this rocking horse that had great yarn hair. and i would sit on it and try to teach myself how to braid. and when i graduated to braiding doll's hair, i would still sit on it... everything there was crowded, and i loved it. i used to try and make little hide outs. this one time, we had just seen some gymnastics of some sort, and i remember clearing out a little space. and i stood up, and put my arms out, and jumped! i flung my head back while i was in the air (trying to flip) i fell down. but i tried over and over again... there was this other time, i was very focused on trying to put some poor animal in clothes or something of that sort. and i started to drool. being so little, i hadn't really been too concerned with saliva. i remember jumping up and running to the bathroom and spitting in the toilet. there was this huge feeling of relief. like, now i was out of danger. so i went back to what i was doing. and was soon struck with more spit. so i jumped up again, and ran to the toilet to spit it out. this happened a few more times, and by this point i was near in tears, and my dad came out and asked me why the toilet had been flushing so much... i remember being terrified and concerned that i was going to need to go to the hospital because of this and they were going to give me a shot. which is enough to terrify any toddler. i probably said something like, "dad, there's stuff in my mouth." and of course he probably said something like "that's natural, it's always been there"