I feel ill equipped to write this post right now. I can't locate my Kindle. I'm pretty sure it is up in my room somewhere, but my husband is out of town on business so I let Becky sleep on his side of the bed last night (she's the prickliest, sauciest child during the day, but at night she wants to sleep in the same room with mommy!), and I don't want to turn on the light and wake her up! So I'm just going on memory or rather, my gut responses to reading this chapter.
Anyway, I think this is the best book I've read on this sort of thing since I read Holiness for Housewives. The author is so clear-sighted, intelligent and profound about everything. She's really thought through what home and housekeeping mean from a Christian worldview. And it's beautiful. I'm finding it very inspiring and it's coloring my attitude which is such a blessing. To me housekeeping is just another long line of failures on my part. At least that's how I look at it. I am very negative about it, always on the brink of despair. I don't like it when people say they can't handle things. I always want to say it's all in your attitude. Some people say they can't handle more than two kids. I could handle that. Some say they could never home school, I could handle that. But the one thing I do say I can't handle is housework. So maybe I know my limits? Or maybe it really is in one's attitude and I've just had a bad one for so long which is so entrenched, that I can't see my way around it.
Yesterday, I was rereading the second chapter (or at least I think it was still the second chapter, sometimes on my Kindle I have a hard time knowing exactly where I am in the book) and the author talked about housework being sacramental. At that moment those words struck a beautiful chord in my heart. At the time I was feeling very sleepy and low-energy and in truth rather crabby. I forced myself to come downstairs to the kitchen/family room where I spent probably the better part of 30 minutes just tidying up. I started at one end of the room and worked to the other end. I put on some beautiful Christmas music sung by a Catholic choir. I threw out bits of trash. I took the stuff that belonged upstairs and put it on our steps so that the next time I went up I could take them with me (only did about half). I straightened the piles of books so the coffee table didn't look like a trash heap. I cleared off the kitchen table which was still full of clutter from my preparations for our Aquinas Learning Day. I'm always trying to have a craft to go with the saint of the week. Yesterday we learned about Andrew the Apostle (whose feast day was Wednesday, the day before!) so we made these little Russian Christmas Star ornaments (St. Andrew is said to have traveled to Kiev and is the patron saint of Russia). I cleared off our kitchen island which is always absolutely covered in all things kitcheny - my glass jars of flour, the lazy susan, the bagel guillotine, sundry things that should be put back into the pantry, fruit bowl, glasses, cups, plates, old mail. . . .
While I was tidying Becky came in. She began to lobby for a baby sister. This is an ongoing thing with her. Poor dear. She was not meant to be the baby of the family. I mean personality-wise. She is the type of person who is meant to be in charge! She is determined, resourceful, take-charge. She NEEDS to be directing something or somebody. She daydreams all the time of having a passel of little siblings. I believe she has two variations in her daydreams. One variation includes at least 5 little brothers and sisters and she's given names to them all. But yesterday she was lobbying for just a baby sister. "Please mom, can't we adopt someone? Please. I'm asking you because if I ask Dad he just laughs. But you don't laugh because you kind of like the idea, don't you?" (I think my husband is kind of open to the idea too. He's done several pro bono adoption cases and I think that's changing his heart). Then she started to sob. "Mom, all my daydreams are about something that will never happen!" It about broke my heart. I tried to explain that choosing a child to adopt is not like picking out a puppy or a new doll. I tried to explain all the changes it would bring. I think about what an ongoing hard time we've had adjusting to having my aunt move in with us. I tell that I think I'm too old to adopt. She thought that was ridiculous. I tell her it takes a very long time from beginning to end. That it could take a year or two and that she'd be older and maybe not really want a little sister anymore. She vehemently denied this though the idea of such a long wait dismayed her greatly.
We wound up looking at a list of children waiting for adoption. We found a little 4 year old girl who is blind. "Oh, Mommy! Can't we adopt her! Your mom was blind! You know about blind people! We could help her! I could take care of her!"
This is really drifting from the topic of housekeeping but really not so much. Because it is all about service. Serving one another. For me as the mother, serving my husband and children by providing them with a comfortable home. I look at the rooms I tidied yesterday at about 4 p.m. Since then more stuff has been dumped on the coffee table and there's a blanket and a pair of shoes in the middle of the floor. Dishes are stacked up that never got loaded into the dishwasher last night. There's a big pile of pots and pans that have dried and need to be put away. And this isn't even mentioning all the clutter on my desk that has overflowed onto the counter next to it. Instead of being exasperated that I'll have to tidy again (probably a couple of times today) I should see this as an ongoing gesture of care for my family. I wish I could maintain feeling that way. I wish I could be convicted down deep in my psyche. Alas, I only get glimmers of that and instead fall very easily back into my negative habits of thought. I think this will be my prayer today: Lord, lift me up!
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