Into the Fray

This weekend was all about diving in headfirst. We have lived in this house for ten years now and it’s the only home my girls have ever known. Since our family stones have not been rolling, they have been collecting moss. Actually, we’ve been collecting everything.

It’s a little like carbon dating. If you shoot the probe down through the layers, you can see the progression of the last ten years. At work, I am highly organized and people have said to me “wow, your house must be pristine!” Yeah, not so much.

In my efforts to organize, I came across some great stuff that I had squirreled away on sticky notes or in notebooks that made it more fun (and in some cases, gave me a bit of a jolt) as I went. I’ll share a few:

S: Mom, here’s a tip about me… I stay awake until I’m asleep. (This was said with a completely straight face.)

Scrawled on a sticky: “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

R (as I’m hugging her goodnight): I miss you.
Me: I miss you too.
R: I miss you all day.
Me: I know, Honey, I miss you too when I’m at work.
R: You gotta get fired.

Little boy at martial arts testing: Why are your toenails red with black stripes?
Me: Because that’s the belt I’m testing for today. I like to make my toenails match my belt.
Him: I could paint mine…
Me: …..
Him: But I’d have to paint them green and that would be awkward.

Another sticky, from when I was apparently attempting to motivate myself: “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” Charles R. Swindoll

There were papers from when I’d lost my job because of a corporate buy-out and immediately after, papers from the hospital regarding my pregnancy with my youngest (R). Yes, those happened at the same time. There was, with those, some rather depressing journal entries about how difficult it was to find a job when pregnant.

There were drawings that ranged from a few scribbles on the back of a sheet of music to intricate mandalas on art paper. Between the two, there were lots (and lots) of pictures of kitties in various degrees of detail and many renditions of our house and us, usually smiling under rainbows and bright yellow sunshines.

It’s really no wonder how our house got so full. When there are such wonderful memories and beautiful things associated with them, it’s difficult to let go of things. I think the trick is to capture these things as much as possible with pictures, scans of artwork, and journaling the adorable things kids say and keep them in a way that doesn’t take up more room than a jump drive. The only thing left is to make sure that we pop those jump drives in every now and then and reminisce. By doing so, I can maybe have the seemingly impossible organized (mostly) house and keep those moments that will never come again.

After all, kids really do grow up too fast. I’ve got to grab onto those priceless moments every chance I get, even if it means that our house is a little bit less than pristine.