Today we spent three hours cleaning.
My husband tidies downstairs, puts every single little stray toy back where it goes, tosses all the left-them-where-we-took-them-off jackets and scarves back upstairs, and walks an endless path up and down the stairs to deliver books out of place.
I work on the upstairs, picking tiny pieces of crayon paper from the carpet because the 4-year-old likes to tear then off his crayons during quiet time, re-shelving the ten thousand books on the floor of our library (because boys have a hard time keeping that three-books-down-at-a-time rule), hanging up the stack of 2T clothes one twin decided looked like a nice jumping-in pile.
I don’t really mind all that time, though, because I’m listening to an audio book and I am alone.
I don’t really mind it, that is, until the boys have undone all that work and clothes litter the floor again and books have fallen from shelves and crayons lie there, dumped out yet again.
I quit. You guys figure out how to live in a pig pen.
That’s what I want to say. But then I remember: I have to live here, too.
Sometimes the gift of having more-than-the-national-norm number of children is the continual stripping of my control over things like clean and tidy.
I like my house tidy. I work best when it’s tidy. I function best when it’s tidy. I flourish and love better when it’s tidy.
At least, that’s what I like to yell when it’s completely out of hand. The reality is, tidy means control. We try to control the mess, but children, if they come with anything at all, come with mess. Which means we’ll go clinically crazy if we don’t let this go.
They take their clothes off and leave them where they stripped, and even if I remind them today to put those shirts and pants where they go—laundry or closet—they will forget tomorrow and do it all again. They leave their books just inches from the shelves, and they take out all their socks to try to find just the right pair, and they forget to put their backpacks on those hooks we attached to the wall for this very unclutter-the-school-clutter purpose.
And, yeah, it’s important for them to know these things, how to put clothes where they go and how to re-shelve books and how to hang backpacks on the proper hooks, but when the only words I’m saying to my children are, “Don’t forget those clothes you just took off.” “Hey, hang your backpack where it goes.” “Only three books at a time down,” maybe there’s a little bit of control that needs a little mess-fire to burn it clean away.
Because it’s more important that they unknot this knot that gets my heartbeat quickening and my face flaming and my words twisting, and it’s more important that I see them as more than inconvenient frustrations to my clean-house expectation.
Messes, they become memories.
You see? There are the clothes he stripped off as soon as he got downstairs so he could put on that Wolverine costume and save the world, and do you remember how he flew from couch to couch and did that amazing flip to the floor?
And there are the books we read for the day’s first story time, the ones he kept with him because he wanted to remember the way that story about knights and dragons and living a thousand years ago made him feel strong and mighty, and do you remember the words he said, how you were his princess and he was your knight?
And there are the socks he wore on his hands today for the slippy-slide across the kitchen floor, and remember the way he laughed at the fun of it?
Every single one of those messes tells a story.
And so, when the oldest steals into our room, after he’s supposed to be in bed and even though it’s against the rules, when he leaves that book he brought to show me on the floor, I bite my tongue.
Tomorrow, when I climb from my bed and trip over it, I will remember.
I will remember the way his hair, still a little wet from his bath, smelled like citrus mixed with cedar, and I will remember the way his hand felt, warm and soft in mine, and I will most of all remember that voice,” I want to show you this, Mama,” and the way I listened and really heard.
These things are worth remembering.
This is an excerpt from Family on Purpose Episode 1: January: We embrace wisdom. Spiritual Maturity. Humility. This episode will release Dec. 2. To learn more about Family on Purpose, visit the project landing page.
