Despair. Is despair too strong a word? No, despair is exactly right. It�s an icy January of life and I�m going uphill with the brakes on.

I have two children. One is twelve and the other, as of today, is fifteen. One of them currently is capable of maintaining herself and her things, cooking for herself, cleaning for herself, and even making minor repairs to such diverse things as furniture and buttons. That same one can bathe on a reasonable schedule and paint. The other one is older and going off to school in three years. Three years may not be enough.

The problem does not appear to be teaching skills or opportunities. Both have had coaching in such matters and opportunities to practice. With luck, the problem is only interest. Surely, it cannot be intelligence. Most likely, it�s attitude, bad attitude. Fighting attitude is always noisy. Do they make designer earplugs or, to go closer to solving the problem at the source, do they make a child muzzle?

Doing laundry in my house is a very simple matter. No one is very fussy. There are red polish marks on the washer and the dryer with the settings to use when in doubt. Day-Hay has been using those settings since she was a little under eight. (She learned to do wash after a fire near us resulted in an entire family being killed and they suspected the dryer might have started it. Doing laundry gave her a feeling of control.) She used to use a stool to reach but she�s been handling it for years. Kat still can�t seem to master the machines even now that she can push a dial and turn it at the same time. (Until she could do both things at the same time, I was willing to accept that my washer and dryer were beyond her.)

Vacuuming is one of the simplest household chores. Kat pretends she cannot remember where the vacuum is, how you go over the floor, and, if she could get away with it, how to plug it in. If it can�t be heated in a microwave, she won�t attempt it. She�s afraid of the stovetop, although she can cook a few things over a campfire. I am not putting a campfire ring in my kitchen.

Then there is grooming. I know that the child fancies herself a boy but if she doesn�t learn to wash her hair well and do it reasonably often, I�m threatening to cut it off like a boy�s. She had some hippy day at her theater program. Mr. Philately observed that she was authentic in her costume, down to the hair that looked like she had been at Woodstock for days.

No, despair is not too strong a word. It�s going to be a long summer. She IS going to learn all these things if it kills me�and it just might.

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