This house.
Our home has a large bathroom off the kitchen with two windows; one, along the wall where the toilet and sink are, and another, on the wall beside the toilet. For now, a bent curtain rod rests in the upper half of the second window, naked and unable to hold the curtain that used to hang there. I’ve never liked this bathroom, least of all the location of it, the toilet too close to our stove (albeit in a different room but still, too close). I am frustrated that we haven’t had the time or money to take on the renovation we’ve talked about for years to rectify this, to make better use of the large space that this “half” bathroom occupies. Now, on top of it being a bathroom I don’t like, there is something to fix within it. This task in our bathroom is one of many things that need to be done around here because we live with small children. I feel both overwhelmed by this curtain rod, staring at me as a “to-do” item, but also, incredibly in love with the view of it. It brings back a refrain I often tell myself when my home environment feels out of control…”kids live here.”
Violet, my spirited 4 year old, was only trying to adjust the curtain, after all.
It's things like the broken curtain rod that tell me that our house is very much alive. I know my house is alive because when I clean something or pick something up or tidy something it quickly becomes unclean, un-picked up, untidied. The unfolded laundry sitting in a white wash basket with t-shirts worn last week, the miscellaneous plastic toy on the counter that came from a birthday party goody bag, the swimmies worn in the creek layed out to dry now wet again with rain…all these things tell me a story. And while I love the stories these snapshots provide, the sight of them also completely overwhelms me. There’s so much doing I have to do.
In fact, some days…maybe even most days…I feel as if I am caring for the house more than I am caring for my three children. I’m unprepared for this job of “house-caretaker”. When I left my full time corporate job after my oldest was born, it was to care for him…not for this house. I resent this home-maker role - I didn’t expect to care for this living thing. It was never meant for me to maintain - it was for me to control. I was good at that. I used to love making a neat space, with weekly vacuuming from top to bottom, dusting every surface, and then, only then, lighting a candle to sit down, relax, and enjoy my work. My home was submissive then - it bent to my will. I cleaned - it listened. Now, full of lives - that of me, my husband, my three children, my two bunnies - my home is full of life.
I don’t know how to care for it. I can no longer clean it into submission, just as I can’t punish and control my kids into being a certain way. Can I let my home live, and gently guide it, the way I do my children? Can I gently repair what needs tending to, and let go of what bothers me but needs no urgent remedy? Can I show my kids how to care for this loving thing so that one day, hopefully soon, they will also take care in picking up their dirty socks from the floor? How can we love our home for all it is - for all its flaws, for all it has to offer, regardless of how far the toilet is from the stove?