The Creative Home Invader

When my daughter was seven years old, my mother-in-law came for a visit. One evening, I came home from work to find that my young son had a raging fever. I bundled him up and drove him to the clinic, where the doctor determined that he had a double ear infection and an eye infection.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, when we returned home, I got the shock of my life. 

Yes, the SHOCK OF MY LIFE.

I started to walk down the hallway to my bedroom, and froze. Something was dreadfully wrong. 

Someone had taken what looked like my black eyeliner pencil and drawn a curving (fairly artful) line all the way down one side of the hallway wall! 

No—it couldn’t be. Incredulous, I followed the line in one direction, then another. The rogue artist had drawn all over the light switches, the piano, and on the counter in my bathroom!

I found peace signs, hearts, and flowers—all done in graceful lines. Now, keep in mind, in all the years I had children, they had never once drawn on a wall. 

Who did this? My mother-in-law? A neighbor? God—who else was there?? Had a stranger broken in and drawn on my walls so beautifully and then snuck back out?? 

It couldn’t be Adam because he just wasn’t that creative. Besides, he was sick and in a deep sleep.

I must have shrieked because everyone came running. Sara examined the drawings and commented that someone had done a very nice job.

She was even kind enough to point out the designs on the window that I missed.

I stared at her, just plainly horrified. 

“Did you do this?”

“No, Mom.” This was the one time in her life that she did not immediately confess.

I peered into her eyes.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Well, I wanted to believe her—so badly. Nobody else believed her, of course.  Rob pulled out drawings of hers and patiently pointed out to me that the style was the same—it was her MO. 

Oh yes, it was just like an FBI investigation, except terribly upsetting. 

I didn’t want to believe it—of course I didn’t! Why would she do this, at seven years old, and for the first time? Had seven years of diligent parenting been for nothing?

And worse, she lied about it. We asked her again and she answered that she didn’t know who did it.

After an absolutely dreadful evening, and I mean dreadful (it was exhausting trying to sort through all of my imaginary suspects), I went to bed.

In the morning, we asked her again, and brought out her drawings, pointing out the similarities. At first she didn’t answer. Then, very slowly, her face crumpled and a loan tear slipped down her cheek.

“You did this.” Her father spoke.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“You lied to us.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Why, Sara?”

She sniffed. “I saw the eyeliner pencil and I wondered if it would draw a smooth line, and I needed a big space... I don’t know what happened.”

We found out later that my mother-in-law had made huge, sugary raisin tarts that afternoon, and Sara had eaten three of them on an empty stomach, which would spell DISASTER for her (and for me!). 

Still, when it was all over, I was mostly horrified by how poorly I handled the whole situation. To think that I actually considered that someone had broken into the house to draw on my walls with an eyeliner pencil! 

I had run around in frantic mental circles because I didn’t want to admit that the culprit was my very own overly creative first born on an intense sugar high.

Sadly, that incident cost me most of the confidence I had built up over the years, in terms of my parenting abilities. 

After that, I started over.