Things Fall Apart...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed [...]

---William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

This morning, I think I made my oldest daughter's world fall apart. She and her sister (the three-year old) both wanted to sit in the same chair at the counter. When they started fighting, I took the chair away and told them both they had to sit elsewhere. And then, the blood-dimmed tide was loosed: there was yelling and screaming and kicking (no, not from me) as they both vied to get what they wanted.

The three-year old calmed down quickly enough. But the five-year old drowned me in her deathbed siren: "BUT I LIKE TO SIT THERE! YOU'RE SO MEAN! I WANT TO SIT THERE! IT'S MY FAVORITE SPOT!" and on and on. Most of this came muffled from behind the closed door to her bedroom, behind which she was dammed soon after the flood pulsed from her tongue. I let her out once when she promised the artery had been plugged, but, alas, it started seeping again soon after she found that I'd placed their plates too close together on the counter.

Needless to say, once she finally got the blood coagulated and started eating, she admitted, between mouthfuls, that she didn't really want to sit in that chair anyway.

I'm glad, I said, happy the tide had ebbed.

At least for now, that is. I'm expecting another flood of passionate intensity anytime.

And so it goes, I guess.

Oh well. I'm off to get my waders.