It’s coming. A force so powerful and devastating, it blazes a path of chaos and destruction everywhere it goes. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
It’s…Hurricane Isaac!
Living right on the edge of the Mid-West, I always felt safe from those monstrous oceanic storms that lay ruin to coastal cities. We’ve had the occasional tornado, but they’ve been few and far between.
But now I feel secure no more. Now I live in fear of my own personal natural disaster, which just happens to reside within the walls of my very own house. I’m referring, of course, to my one-year-old son.
Oh, he may appear harmless with his chubby little cheeks and his baby-blue eyes. But don’t be fooled. It’s only a disguise. Once he’s set free to toddle around the house, the destruction begins as he randomly searches out cupboards to ransack, shelves to topple, and cherished valuables to smash into oblivion.
One of Isaac’s favorite haunts is the kitchen, where he immediately makes a b-line for the garbage can, searching for something slimy and perhaps rotten to either stick in his mouth or throw across the floor—sometimes both. You immediately run over and remove him from the vicinity of the garbage, thinking you’ve remedied the problem, when all of a sudden his eyes catch the open door of the dishwasher. Before you can react, he’s already inside, grabbing at the dirty forks and knives with cobra-like quickness.
So then you remove him from the kitchen altogether, saying “NO!” and “DON’T TOUCH!”, thinking you’ve made an impression on him as you try to go finish cooking dinner. But the minute you turn your back, he’s already on his way to the den, where he opens the cupboard door and begins to empty its contents on the floor with such fury, it’s like he’s a ravenous beast eviscerating some unfortunate prey.
Hearing the racket, you follow the sound to find the boy ripping a book’s pages out with his little baby teeth. My daughter reads books. She turns pages gently and admires the illustrations, making up her own story as she goes. Isaac devours books, literally, leaving nothing but ragged edges and saliva stains.
I’m a boy, and I never threw garbage or ate books or strew my toys haphazardly all over the house. At least that’s what my mommy says. So how is it that my son—the fruit of my loins, the one who looks like my genetic clone—how is it that he is obviously part Tasmanian devil?
For the time being, I guess we’ll just have to learn to live with the daily destruction that Hurricane Isaac leaves in his wake. So what if the house is a little messy? I guess I can live with that. After all, it’s just a phase. It can’t last forever. Can it?
I wonder if FEMA provides recovery assistance for toddler-related disasters?
