La Vida Loca

The Laundry Chair

There are peas, hard and shriveled, scattered about on the linoleum under the dining table.  They keep company (among other unidentifiable items) with the stiff and brittle ramen noodles that resemble beige snakes frozen with shock.  Something of mysterious origins, sticky and brownish gray, has been splattered, dribbled, then dried on the wall in the living room.  The supposed-to-be white Ektorp sofa from Ikea has mud, blood and green marker all over its cover, like a post modernism work of art.  Tiny rock-hard pieces of purple and yellow playdough have fossilized into the carpet, and remain impossible to extract without a chisel.  All the light switches, each and every one, in every single room in this house, has a solid film of mud covering it.  The windows are smeared with greasy, grimy fingerprints, and would act in some blessed way like a sunblock.  If we ever had sun.  There's a chair in the corner of the living room that we've labeled the "Laundry Chair" because usually as many as five clean loads sit there waiting to be folded, like a disinterested pet, one more body taking up space in our limited space of a place.  The real pets, the cats, should grow thumbs and change their own stinking litter box for once.  AJ's art is not only hanging on the fridge but painted onto the table, spilling out of the quaint boxes I bought to (ironically) organize his craft stuff.  The dishes in the sink could nearly wash themselves.  I secretly hope they do.

These are the days that cause me to wonder.  How can we live in so much disarray, filth, and chaos?  And--for the most part--be okay with it?  For me, I've let myself become tempered, adjusted.  It's not that I like it.    Or simply ignore it.  I see it.  How can I not?  But letting it consume me and take me away from my family time, or worse, pummeling myself for not being capable of executing the endless myriad of tasks and chores, is not an option.  Granted, there are those days when the house smells like wet dog (we don't even HAVE a dog!) and I feel myself sinking into that dismal abyss that makes me greedy:  more space, cleaner kids, less mud-making rain, no cats, etc.  Those days push me to the brink of insanity and I snap, then in a flurry, with lots of yelling at small people under toe who want food or water or attention or other basic life-sustaining necessities, the dishes get done, the floors get swept, the laundry folded and put away.  And those days have taught me, as I reflect in bed at the end of it all, to question was it worth it?  If I could do it all over again, would I?

This is the life.  I love it.  It's at times muddy, bloody, messy, and smelly, but there are so many blessings in this box we call home.  Four brightly shiny souls dwell here, and God sings over us.  This is the season we're in, a brief snap-of-the-fingers in the timeline of our lives.  I cling to it, breathe it in, wallow in it, because it's precious and fleeting. I imagine one day, soon too soon, I'd gladly trade a clean and tidy home to have this crazy life with my boys small and wild again.