I try really hard to always have the house clean when Kate gets home from work. She has never given me grief when I have failed to do so, but I know that she sleeps better when the house is tidy, and after a 12 hour graveyard shift I want her to be able to relax and not worry about it. She works hard during the week, tending to the kids’ every need, so I want to make sure that on weekends that when she’s not working, she is resting. It goes better some days than others. Some days I feel Tom Cruise in Risky Business (no, I don’t dance to Bob Seger in my underpants). At the end of the film he races around getting the house put back together before his parents get home, just finishing immediately before they pull up.
Since my kids are normal, they are also messy. Whitney and Patrick are getting old enough that they are pretty good about cleaning up after themselves, though they still need to be prodded. But even when the kids do clean their rooms, they don’t get things quite right at times, and I have to come behind them to redo it and make sure things are up to snuff.
Tonight as I cleaned gum off of the balusters I wondered why I care so much. I think part of it was drilled into me as a kid. Once my mother vacuumed the front room we weren’t able to use the front door, because our footprints would disturb the vacuum pattern in the carpet. Another reason is that I worry that on the off chance that someone would drop in to see us they might see that my house dirty. How embarrassing it would be if people found out that humans live here…
I really need to worry less about whether or not there are crayon marks on the walls, and more about spending some time reading to the kids. I am reminded of an axiom that to this day hangs on the laundry room wall of my father’s house. It reads thus:
Although you’ll find our house a mess,
Come in, sit down, converse.
It doesn’t always look like this.
Some days it’s even worse.
