Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

Busy, Busy, Busy

by Sara Peterson-Davis

When I had tried my mother’s patience to its limit, she would exclaim, “Someday I hope you have a daughter, and that she’s just as busy as you are.”

I did, and she is.

Like many mothers, I know my mom meant this mostly as a blessing, but also as a little bit of a curse. I’m sure my grandma felt the same way when she said it to my mother.

When I was 8 years old, I had a penchant for rearranging the bookshelves, playing with the electric drill and giving our poodle weekly makeovers. My mother frequently called through the house, “Sara, where are you and what are you doing now?”

At the same age, my mother had an affinity for covering everything with gild paint, a need to collect bricks from an abandoned cistern to build her dream house and a penchant to rearrange her room about 15 times a year. All this made my grandma a little crabby.

My Little Miss Busy’s interests include labeling everything in the house with handmade signage, rearranging the photographs and knickknacks in the living room and making culinary wonders out of graham crackers, Hershey’s syrup and Lucky Charms, all while flying under my radar.

Like my mother and her mother before, if I don’t check when it gets really quiet around the house, I’m likely to find things not the way I like to find them.

For a long time, I couldn’t understand why my little girl couldn’t leave things alone, keep them the way I liked them, the way they should be?

Then it occurred to me that all that “busyness” is her way of growing up and becoming her own person.

When I was her age, I couldn’t understand why my mom didn’t keep the glasses in the cupboard next to the sink or why we had that awful flowered wallpaper in the hallway. I itched to make things the way I thought they should be.

When I moved the glasses and suggested that the hallway could use something new and different, I thought I was being helpful. My mother had different thoughts. “When you grow up and have your own house, you can do whatever you want,” she grumped. “Until then, leave mine alone.”

And when I moved out on my own I did.

Now, after more than 20 years of being the queen of all I survey, there’s a princess checking out the lay of the land, itching to rearrange my kitchen cabinets and absolutely hating the color I painted the hallway bathroom.

While I’m not ready to abdicate my throne, I imagine I could give in a little and try to channel some of that busyness so we don’t drive each other insane.

I would also make this wish.

I hope that my busy little girl has a busy little girl of her own some day.

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