Real Life

When I was younger-- like junior high age (middle school hadn't been invented yet)-- I used to cut out pictures from magazines and catalogs and create pictures of my future life.  I would glue the pictures onto sheets of paper to make maps of my future home.  These beautiful french doors will lead to my garden... This cute blond girl will be my daughter named Alice (after the Wonderland heroine).... This huge and immaculate kitchen will be in the west wing of my house.... and this tower will be just off the master bedroom suite, so I can have the smaller library of my favorite books close at hand.  I tried to find a picture of a husband that looked as much as possible like Joel, a boy in my school that I had a terrible crush on, but to whom I had never actually  spoken.  He would clearly make a wonderful husband.  After all, he had really nice hair. 

I thought of this the other day after the basement had flooded.  Everything non-perishable from the storage room was in the garage, our food storage was all over the dining room, and one of our cats had begun boycotting the litter box.  (From what I read online, rearranging furniture can be stressful to cats.  I figured the whole flooded basement situation probably qualified.)  I was fed up with not being able to use the garage or the dining room, with not being able to find anything (think construction zone mixed with a house just after moving) and with the smell of cat urine everywhere.

I tried cleaning the house, but everywhere I went to put something away I found another thing the cat had urinated on.  My cheerful "let's clean up the house!" attitude turned into something more like, "What are you all doing just sitting there?  Can't you see there is a disaster here?  Get up!  Work!  Be feverishly cleaning!"  My children started watching me carefully out of the corners of their eyes while scrubbing and saying things like, "It's ok, mom.  Don't hyperventilate.  We'll get it clean."  I bagged up smelly backpacks, stinky tennis shoes, and anything else that was unfortunate enough to be in my path.  But when I got to the garage with the trash, I opened the door and stopped.  Others had taken the trash out before me, and --unable to find a path through the piles of stuff to the trash can-- they had dumped bags of trash on top of the piles and all around the garage door.  I tried hitting the garage door opener so I could sidestep the mess, but it wouldn't open.  

One of my kids found me just then, and seeing the look in my eye, suggested this might be a good time for me to go get in the shower.  I dropped the trash bag onto the pile and went upstairs.  But when I opened my bathroom door, there were two huge Rubbermaid boxes full of Legos soaking in water and urine deodorizer-- one in the shower, the other just inside the door-- blocking my entrance to the room.  

I called to Joshua to ask how I was supposed to get in the shower with his Legos in my bathroom.  He pointed out that we have two showers in the house.  

oh yes.  

I gathered up my towel, shower cap, and a change of clothes and made my way to the kids' bathroom.  (When I told Rachel about this later, she groaned at this point, knowing the usual state of the kids bathroom.)  Let me just say, a couple of boxes of Legos were nothing compared to the swimsuits, soggy towels, hair brushes and clumps of wet dog hair I found in the kids' bathroom.  At least someone had bathed the dog.  

At this point I suddenly remembered those collage houses I had made in junior high... The french doors, the library tower, and the immaculate kitchen... Where had I gone wrong?  How had I gotten into this mess?

As I leaned my head against the bathroom door post and cried my kids came up the stairs and someone put their arms around me.  "It's ok, mom.  Just step over the wet towels and ignore the dog hair.  That's what we do."  

I did have a very long shower that day.  And by the time I got out, the kids' shower was sparkling like it hasn't been since we bought this house.   

We have since put about half the stuff back in the storage room, reclaimed our dining room (but not our garage), consulted a cat psychologist online and found a non-lethal solution to the urine problem, and put the fresh-smelling Legos back in Joshua's room.  Last night I gave the dog a bath myself and cleaned up the kids' bathroom-- which really didn't need all that much work-- when I was done.  As soon as I finish writing this I plan to have a shower in my own bathroom.  

And I guess I'll keep my kids (none of whom are named Alice), and my husband (who looks nothing like Joel, especially in the hair category) and make due with my square Colonial house without either a west wing or a tower.  But we Do have a library, so all is not lost.  And I don't know who that blond girl in the catalog was, but she can't possibly be as wonderful as my real kids.  Besides, since she was only slightly younger than me at the time, she is undoubtedly raising her own kids right now, perhaps also with cats, dogs and flooded basements.

Rebecca  =)