Where is my Transformer?

Nicky asked me this last night. He was tired and almost near tears. He hadn't seen it in a really long time. Where was his Transformer? The small gray one that was about five pieces that could become a spaceship.

I knew exactly where it was. I just couldn't tell him. How could I? His young heart would never understand.

The short answer, the cruel truth is. . .

Well, I threw it away.

The thing is, I didn't think he'd miss it. Why does that kid remember everything?? It was a small gray Transformer that he'd gotten last year. It "transformed" by breaking into small gray plastic pieces that ended up all over the house -- an arm/wing here, a leg/spaceship fuselage there. It was small. It was cheap. Nicky rarely played with it. In fact, I threw it away in parts. I was cleaning and could only find two or three pieces, so threw those away. Then found another part later and had to throw that away because it was no longer a whole. In fact, it's been gone for months, and he hasn't noticed until now. I just couldn't take more crap scattered around -- one more incomplete toy that was here and there and everywhere.

It's all part of MY slow, yet inevitable transformation. I'm becoming my mother.

It's not a bad thing. I adore my mother. She's fantastic. She just has this "thing" about throwing everything away.

It is well-known in my family that if you want to keep something, you have to hide it from my mom. Once she gets into a cleaning frenzy, everything is fair game. Doesn't matter what it is, if she can't find a place for it, she tosses it.

My dad always jokes about one Christmas when my mom, in a haste to get rid of all the Christmas wrapping and ribbons, threw out one of our Christmas gifts, too. To be fair, we have no proof of this. We just know that one of us couldn't find something later that day, and we all blamed my mom.

I can honestly say that I didn't understand her or empathize with her until about a year ago. There's nothing wrong with cleaning, I'd say, but you don't have to THROW EVERYTHING AWAY. When we'd ask her, "Why do you throw everything away?!" Her most frequent response was, "Because I can't take it anymore!"

My transformation hasn't happened overnight. It's been slow. It started with my husband's newspapers.

Seven collects newspapers. He doesn't read them. He doesn't have time for that. They come in the mail. He sits down to read one, reads a little, then one of the kids interrupts by jumping on him and demanding his attention, or maybe his wife comes in and nags him about something she needs him to do. He puts the paper away to read later. The problem is that ANOTHER newspaper comes in the mail the next day. And the next. They just pile up. He keeps tucking them away in the belief that he will be able to read them all. Sometimes I just want to shake him and yell, "PILED UP NEWSPAPERS ARE LIKE AN AVALANCHE. YOU WILL NEVER GET AHEAD!! RUN! RUN! RUN AWAY FROM THE AVALANCHE!"

On top of it all, he buys magazines. They pile up on top of the newspapers. It is a never-ending cycle.

I couldn't take it anymore. I told him to read all of those newspapers or throw the damn things away. They just stood around collecting dust. If he couldn't read them, then I was tossing them out. It's gotten to the point that I go through the advertisements in the mail and throw them away before he can see them and start collecting them. The idea of one more unread newspaper-like item lying around the house makes my eye twitch.*

Then there are the kids and their toys. The toys were relatively easy to keep under control when there was just one kid. He had a lot, but none of them had small pieces, and he didn't scatter them around too much. They were also mostly of the unisex, pre-school variety, which meant we didn't buy many more during Laney's first year.

Suddenly, the toys began raging out of control. The number of wooden train tracks for Thomas multiplied. Duplo (big Legos) were brought in. Girl toys found their way into the home. We got Power Ranger and Spiderman figures. They each come with little weapons that end up everywhere. They also lose arms and legs, which is just more stuff for Mommy to find all over. I've tried. I've tried just putting them back. Putting them back together. I've tried to keep some semblance of order to the toys. It doesn't work. I have to draw the line somewhere and "toy parts" is my line. If I find toys, I'll put them away. If I find toy parts without the other parts in the near vicinity, then it's a toss up.

It takes exactly 3.5 seconds to trash a room I've spent ages cleaning, and this scenario repeats itself endlessly. I simply don't have the patience to keep track of all the toys and all of their parts all of the time.

So when Nicky asked me about that Transformer I'd thought he'd forgotten, I realized my own transformation had begun. It'll take another decade of toy picking up to be complete. I knew if I told him the truth about the Transformer, he'd ask me why. Why did I have to throw everything away?

And I knew the answer would be, "Because, baby, sometimes I just can't take it anymore!"

*I know this isn't just me. A girlfriend told me that she sends her husband out on "errands" so that she can toss stuff. If he's around, he'll try to keep it. However, to this day, he's none the wiser. He just thinks he's read all those newspapers.