November 19, 2004, 8:35 a.m.
Solomon in the Arsenic Hour

It is early evening on a school night, no one has eaten dinner yet, and the air is consequently heavy with the sounds of outrage, bleating, and full-throated ululation. I am frantically trading the contents of two dishwashers full of clean plates for the food-spackled burden on the kitchen counters while keeping an eye on a sizzling pan; Molly is involved in some distant altercation on the stairs with Phoebe when from the dining room comes a sudden piercing —

"Pa-ris!"

I drop in the last dirty glass, flip the dishwasher shut, flick off the burner, pull on invisible judges' robes, and go into the next room.

Violet's face is scarlet, her hair is falling in her face, and indignant tears splash down her cheeks. "It's my chair and I was just about to use it and Paris came along and now he's sitting on it and he won't get off!" She breaks off and points dramatically to her brother, who is exercising squatter's rights on a tiny Ikea chair.

"Well, she won't leave me alone!" he rejoins. His tears have mixed with Oreo crumbs to give his face an interesting "distressed" effect. Drawing breath, he sobs out, "I was just walking along minding my business and I saw the chair, it was upside down, and no one was using it so I sat down in it and now Violet is screaming at me — !"

Violet cuts in furiously, "Well I put it upside down Paris because I was going to use — !"

"Now, now, children," I say with false heartiness, raising my palms blessed-are-the-peacemakers-style, and find myself wishing for the hundredth time that real life were like a film that you could stop mid-frame, so that you could evaluate the image in a leisurely manner before splicing in a moralizing monologue or blaming the malefactor, if any.
Alas, real life speeds by in real time, and two hot faces are looking at me expectantly.

"There is one chair," I begin pleasantly, "and two children who want to use it. Now, let's think how — "

As I talk in soft, reasonable tones, I am aware that it is all phony, all this "problem solving" and "conflict resolution" and "triangulating amongst squabbling siblings" that one is supposed to engage in these days. However the matter ends I will probably have misjudged one, and probably both, of the children. Frankly, I ought to swat the two of them for disturbing the domestic tranquility, but that of course is frowned upon even more than buying one's son a plastic cap pistol and letting him pretend to shoot invisible baddies at the park, which, let me tell you, brings on the wrath of a certain species of white urban adult male —

But that is another story for another time.

"The thing is," I conclude, after much windy triangulation, "It's now dinner time. So no one can use the chair. Please both of you come get napkins and silverware." And just like that, I turn on my heel and stride away.

"But Mummy he — !"

"She wasn't even near — !"

If reading this you are thinking, "What a weak-willed woman, why she oughta — " then you are undoubtedly right. One oughta do many things when children are disputing the ownership of some toy, or elbowing each other for the larger portion of dessert, or gritting their teeth over the fraction of an inch of sofa their seatmate has expropriated — sure, there is plenty you oughta do. Everybody has stories. But doing it consistently twenty times a day in twenty different situations with varying casts of characters and with justice to all? You would have to be a Solomon, and I have never met a mother like that.

Sometimes the conflict takes place on a battlefield so gauzy and remote that it is difficult, as a referee, to know where to start. Consider the predicament of Swamp reader Patricia Boylan. Years ago, on a trip to Washington, she was strolling along the National Mall with her children. It was a lovely evening and her little darlings began a game where they pretended to ride imaginary horses named after Civil War generals. "The next thing I know," Mrs. Boylan recalls, "they're in a heated argument, upset and yelling at each other, because Janet won't let William ride on Stonewall Jackson. There's nothing there, for heaven's sake. How do you get into a fight over something that doesn't even exist?"

Five minutes later, as I'm dishing out the salmon, Violet appears in the kitchen with her face all screwed up again. "Mummy, when I was going up the stairs to wash my hands Phoebe kicked me for no reason!"

"Hang on, sweetheart." Rescuing a fillet from falling, I glance at her face. All is calm.

"Now, what happened?"

Violet's expression immediately turns piteous and her voice breaks. "Phoebe hurt me and I wasn't doing anything!"

"I think you will survive. Go through and sit down."

There was a time when they managed to drag me into every little argument, and I would get all pious and lecturing and generally blame the wrong person. I still do, but, as you can see, I do it much less often.

Two minutes later, Phoebe comes through with a faint whine already issuing from her throat, like smoke from the nostrils of a sleeping dragon. She pauses, sizes me up, and bursts out: "Violet spitted at me, and she pinched me!" She pauses again, visibly searching for further atrocities. "And she kicked me in the face, and she hit me in the eye."

"Wow. You seem all right to me."

Another bullet dodged! Ha ha!

Swiftly changing tack, Phoebe snatches a piece of toffee that someone unwisely left out on the counter. "Can I have this?"

"No, you raxal," I say, snatching it back, "Off to the table, please."

She harrumphs elegantly, like an insulted dowager. "You're not supposed to snatch, Mummy."

We go through to the dining room, me juggling four glasses of milk, to find Molly decorously reading a novel above the fray, and Violet and Paris engaged in a furious, silent tug-of-war over a tiny scrap of white cloth decorated with red hearts.

"Hey, you two!"

"It's mine, Violet!" Paris yells. "Give it back!"

"I'm just looking at it, Paris!" she shouts. "It was just sitting there!"

"Listen, you two, it's just a stupid piece of fabric and neither of you can have it because it is suppertime," I say, more severely than would be ideal. I lean over and pluck away the cloth, instantly transforming myself from serene mediator to aggressor. Both children stop and look at me, injured.

"It's not stupid..." says one softly, and the other murmurs, "I was just holding it..."

"Now," I say, with a strained smile around the table, "Let's. Have. A. Civilized. Supper. Molly darling, will you please say — "

"I," Phoebe announces loudly, "don't like salmon."