PenPenWrites

This is a story Pat, who babysits her four grandchildren two days a week, tells me: She is careful–very careful–about housekeeping on the days she spends in her son's and daughter-in-law's house. If she sees dirty dishes in the sink, she'll clear them. If she sees a floor that's particularly dirty–and with four kids aged 5 through 12, floors are bound to get messy–she might clean it up. But not so that it's obvious. And she would never undertake a large, clean-up project, That is how she operates.

And yet, one day, her daughter-in-law came home from work, looked around her kitchen and asked her–in a tone that had an accusatory edge to it–whether she had rearranged her kitchen cupboards. Things had been moved around and re-stacked. But she had not had a hand in it, Pat informed her daughter-in-law. She knew nothing about it.

Turned out, her son had done it. He liked things arranged in an orderly way and upped and reordered the kitchen cupboard.

Phew. Not guilty. And yet: the first one to be blamed. No matter how carefully we tread, it is not easy to be a guest in a grown child's home.