The Hill House of Style

This morning I was gifted a genuine moment of true "mommy" laughter in our family's otherwise typical daily routine. I stopped dead in my tracks and instantly recognized how our average bustling household is by nature full of diversity and sometimes polar opposites. Toddler, teen. Boy, girl. Sensitive, strong. Upbeat, cranky. A combination of all of these are stirred into the soup of our everyday life.

I walk past two bathrooms on the route from my bedroom to the kitchen and today each was occupied simultaneously with the doors open and a teenage Hill inside. In one, thirteen-year old Phoebe was carefully leaning over the sink putting on mascara one detailed stroke after another. (By the way, she is skilled much beyond my own ability in this area.) Confident and secure she also made the last adjustments to her freshly straightened hair and overall “look” of the day which on this particular morning was 'casual-hip'. “Who are you looking so good for Phoebe?” I asked in a teasing tone secretly hoping she might reveal to me an admirer or crush, “The eighth-grade boys?” We started to laugh in unison while she shook her head and said, “NOT”.

I continued on my way downstairs, passing the other bathroom with the door wide open where sixteen-year old Hunter was putting the finishing touches on his “look” of the day. I would label it 'urban punk'. He was fiddling with his flat-brimmed black and red baseball cap while placing his headphones over the top of it and onto his ears. That’s when I couldn’t hold it in. Many of you readers may know the book by Robert Munsch, I’ll love you Forever? "Here it is", I thought to myself. "It is him, in the flesh!" The children's book is the heart-warming tale of a baby boy who matures into toddlerhood, progresses through adolescence, then his teen years, and eventually moves away on his own. Through each of these phases of life, despite the fact that the boy gets bigger than she, his mother holds and sings to him assuring her son that he will always be her boy. Until she is very old and the boy becomes a man and reciprocates her lifetime of love by holding his sick mother in his arms and singing to her. He also begins the same singing ritual with his own child. The story never fails to make my voice crackle with emotion when I reach the ending when reading out loud. But today, I laughed. It was the vision of my own son in the mirror that struck me so funny. Hunter had grown out of the boy of the story and there, in his reflection in the mirror I saw the teen that “belongs in the Zoo” according to Musch. I chuckled to myself recognizing this milestone of life as well as the dichotomies in our living arrangement. 'Casual-hip' and 'urban-punk' just starting another day while making mine. Everyone left for school together, relatively satisfied with how they appeared to the rest of the world.

Alas, there is three-year old Sailor who won't stop for a second to fuss in front of a mirror but has proven consistently she is undoubtedly comfortable in her own skin. One afternoon while she was immersed in an afternoon of dress-up and imaginary play, the doorbell rang. A neighborhood high-school aged Boy Scout was collecting checks for his troop's most recent fundraiser. Sailor jumped up at the "ding-dong" as if poked by an electric stun gun and answered the door completely naked. Casual but prompt, she said, "Hi" and looked up at the boy as if everything was hunky-dorey. Now, while most mothers would find this toddler with no tan lines and rosy cheeks adorable, our visitor was not as enthralled. When I walked in seconds later, the embarrassed teen was bright-red and holding his hand flat over his eyes making every effort to avoid looking at the baby in the birthday suit standing before him. She was blurting questions at him one after the other like, "What is your name?" "Do you know Hunter?", "My Mom is here. Do you want to see my dollhouse?" I burst out laughing when I walked to the front of the house to see the commotion but quickly apologized once I saw the horror on his face and finally got eye contact with him. Sailor looked up at both of us confused. Let's call her style 'beautifully bare'. And oh, she gets that from her father.

It's nice to have a household filled with unexpected joys. I can't wait for tomorrow.