The Craft Afternoon We Do Not Discuss
Maya Torres
3 min read · Sep 10
The cat is fine. The cat is sparkling. The cat is not fine about it.
Two children, one bottle of glitter glue, and a cat that made a decision it now deeply regrets.
The plan was paper crowns. Modest, achievable, forty minutes, done. I said the word "glitter" out loud in my own home, which I now understand was the point of no return.
Within ten minutes the crowns were abandoned in favour of a project neither child would describe to me. Within fifteen, the cat had walked across the table, which is a thing she does daily and had, until that moment, been getting away with.
She is a long-haired cat. I want you to sit with that detail for a second.
I had a choice. I could be the parent who stops everything and cleans, or the parent who laughs so hard she has to sit down on the floor. I sat on the floor. The floor also had glitter on it.
We are eight months on. I still find it — in the car, in a book, once on a work colleague. My children call it "the sparkle day" and consider it one of the great achievements of their lives, and honestly, so do I.
