transparentsy

I missed posting last Sunday because we’ve been cleaning out our two-year monument of shame: our garage. Two years ago, we moved from another house that had a full basement and attic. This current house has almost no storage, save for the garage.  So, you guessed it! It’s been full of extras for that time.  Add to that two southern, humid summers, and you get a whole lot of yuck. My goal is to have it cleared out before my son’s birthday party since the door is now inoperable and I can’t simply hide the mess anymore. Many items have been relocated to our new storage sheds, but a lot of it simply had to go. My life doesn’t have room for it anymore, however you look at that phrase.

Cleaning out has been at once emancipating and excruciating.  I have a painful time separating the significance of my life from my stuff.  And, I’m not talking about stuff that indicates status–most of this stuff was worthless, monetarily speaking.  I’m talking about personal history and how it’s connected to the physical items that were part of that history.  I was surprised to find a box of items that came to me after my mother died.  Most of the items were mine, and I was glad to part with them.  In fact, I felt a lot of contempt for those things and the years that accompanied them. But, it’s still a long process putting them in the garbage. Other things were not so easy to chuck. I felt so much guilt donating or trashing an item that was given to me by a dear grandmotherly figure or an old friend. What does that say about how I felt or now feel about them? If I let go of this item, will I lose this memory and, in effect, lose the significance of it? Will gutting my house of my possessions streamline my personal history into a wasteland of dream-like, blurry, and meaningless memories? Will it reduce me to an empty woman, void of memories, a shell full of shadows, amnesia-tic and irrelevant?

More to come on this topic.

I’ve been struggling with my three-year-old this week over his abuse of my car, a sexy black Odyssey named Bianca. I have a friend who refers to me as the “car nazi.”  I don’t like dings, scratches, spills, dents and above all, I don’t like a messy car.  I also have four kids. Twice this week, I’ve found my boy climbing on the hood of my car, and today I discovered he had crash landed my husband’s vintage Star Wars ship on it.  He had to be disciplined, so he didn’t get to help prepare or consume the homemade pretzels we were making for Lent.  Since I wanted to give up yelling for Lent, today was a good day.  Tomorrow, we’ll all be taking a joyride to auto detail shop.  Stay tuned to see if I stick to the “yelling fast.”

Lucky for me, the kids’ stuff is first on the agenda. I CAN get rid of my kids extra stuff and they WON’T grow up to hate me for it.  If they do, I’ll listen!  I’ll even serve them a warm cuppa while they complain about the time I got rid of half of their stuffed animals.  They’ll still have fifty left when I’m finished and I need some zen around here!

Our region was under threat of tornadoes this week, and we had an open invitation to rush to our neighbor’s basement in case of imminent danger.  I have a real go-getter girl who is always thinking ahead.  At some point, while donning a headlamp and preparing to save everyone’s life–serving dinner before the storms hit, baking bread, getting a makeshift storm shelter set up in the kids’ closet, stocking it with water and food–my daughter informed she had assembled necessary supplies in the event that we had to run for our lives.  FIVE backpacks of toys, stuffed animals, who knows what else, AND her weaving loom!  My husband has reminded me that this was precious; it was quite overwhelming and exasperating in the moment.  However, it’s been a good reminder for me to stop and appreciate the ways that each of my children are wired.  I have since thanked her for her presence of mind in a moment of crisis.

The grown ups were right about discipline.  It doesn’t hurt our kids nearly as much as it hurts us.  I kept my kids home from a party tonight because they broke a clear rule that I have set.  A party they’ve looked forward to all week.  I try to think of this as a vaccination–a little pain to prevent a lot of future heartache.  If my children cannot understand and respect my own boundaries, then they’ll never learn to abide within any of life’s boundaries. Their adult lives will be train wrecks. My heart hurts now, but later I’ll be thanking myself. One day, they will too.

I read this on Simple Mom.  It’s a comment on Tsh Oxenreider’s post about her reflections on middle eastern hospitality: http://simplemom.net/inrl/

I love to entertain and have people over. I am not one of those people with a clean, organized, and tidy home. I grew up with a mom who was always cleaning, organizing, and always exhausted. I love her for the things she taught me, but there was a cost too. We didn’t get enough “Mom” as we needed. I didn’t want to do that to my own kids. I try to keep it balanced, but it is hard. I think it’s a constant battle. I find when my house gets out of control, my moods often get that way too.

“. . . there was a cost, too. We didn’t get enough ‘Mom’ as we needed.”

I’m afraid that I am setting up my kids for that cost.  I’d like to hear your thoughts, experiences, and advice.  Thanks.