I have the painting hanging on my mind’s white wall. It is centered, of course; matted and framed.
I’ve been sitting on a slipcovered sofa, staring. Tilting my head this way, that. Hoping to find its secret.
I forgot to pick up a child from school yesterday. And he isn’t even my own child.
It was 4:20pm and I wondered what I had missed and then I screamed and shouted for my keys and ran out the door and realized I didn’t have his mother’s number saved in my phone.
The school said he’d been picked up and then his mother called as I was weaving my way into her driveway.
She was laughing. She said it was no big deal and not to worry and it made her laugh.
She thought it was freaking hilarious.
I couldn’t breathe easily for three hours and my legs were adrenaline-numb for even longer.
“If my son having to wait for his school pickup for thirty minutes is the worst thing that happens to him, then I’ll sing hallelujah and life will be perfect.”
She says it as she holds scars from brain surgery and can’t drive because of seizures and her three year old daughter battles illnesses of which the severity is too much to speak.
My bathroom mirror is covered in toothpaste thanks to small boys who still need help polishing teeth. The trash bin has exploded and the towels need a hot water wash.
There is a pile of clothes two feet high covering my bedroom blanket chest and I haven’t opened my closet in a week because why should I when everything is right there? I think all the socks are clean. Who knows.
Today I panicked because it all needs to happen but my day planner shows a trail of tasks too long and there isn’t time to worry about toothpaste and clothes hangers.
I attempted to clean the truck after hauling car seats to the garage and filling the vehicle with women for a weekend. But I forgot about the dinosaur stickers.
When she chuckled and mentioned them, sitting back there, I launched a diatribe about not allowing stickers on anything but paper but they ended up stuck to everything anyway and oh mah gah I can’t stand all the stickers on tables and windows and beds and books and…
She was quiet right then.
Half an hour later the conversation had turned and she was taking us into her story. Babies gone too soon and rejection from the people she loved and her daughter so sick in the hospital and cancer, cancer, cancer.
She told us it has healed as it has ravaged and that she is thankful to not care about things like messes and hurry and dishes and…
stickers, I whispered.
I feel it all, tight in my chest, when every room looks like a bomb or it’s time for school and Troy hasn’t even put on his jeans or I miss a deadline or my list won’t be shortened or the whining from Merritt just. won’t. stop.
It’s there, frustration ready to shoot like a missile headed toward whomever happens to be the nearest target when all I want to do is punish myself.
Why is it so hard to just… be perfect?
Today I said yes instead of no on our way home from the chiropractor and we ordered sausage burritos for a dollar.
And I haven’t cleaned the bathroom.
I pulled a shirt from the laundry pile.
And I told myself to just stop trying so hard
because does it even matter?
perfect.
perfect timing, my dear friend.
i was going to email you. dm you. whatever.
but i guess now is as good a time as any to tell you,
that this Christmas?
this Christmas we should get the best present ever.
and it makes my heart burst.
if it falls through, i will be crushed. but it’ll just mean that someone
else’s family needs their soldier home, more than we do…..
:)
!!!!
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Tasha Reply:
November 30th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
I’m hugging you through the internet. :)
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This is something we all need to read. It was perfect! Look! You did something perfect! :)
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Ash, this was SO refreshing to read.
Perhaps it’s my personality, but I constantly live in a state of “guilt” when things around me aren’t “perfect” and I let myself get bogged down with trying to be “JUST SO” . To be less than that, I feel like a failure.
THANK YOU for your honesty & transparency. It’s like fresh air.
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Brilliant. I’ve missed you so and glad to see you writing again and this? Right on time. Perhaps perfect.
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Wow, it really puts it all into perspective…
I learned a lot about what was truly important in my life this summer when my world came crashing down. When my aunt died suddenly, it all came to a screeching halt. I held my family close, I told them I loved them more and more each day and then messes and being late and all those superfluous things didn’t matter anymore….
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I love the way you write… So poignant. What you say always hits me square between my eyeballs. How true. I’m learning to shush my complaints with remembering the girl whose husband came home in a flag-draped casket, or my mommy friend whose baby girl won’t cognatively surpass the age of 3 months nor live far into her teens if she’s lucky… And yet how do these people live with such joy, while I, who has it all, think I have a right to complain? Yeah. Not really. Thanks for your thoughts. <3
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Thank you so much for sharing this I have made myself to feel for so long that I was the only one of our small community that wan’t perfect.(you know of whom I speak) Everyone else’s kids never leave dribbles of oatmeal on the table to be found hours later needing to be jackhammered off. No one else’s kids dumpt the dirty clothes out of the hamper to pretend they are a turtle and leave it laying there. The piles of clean laundry waiting to be folded that sometimes get worn again before the are even put away. I don’t know why it seems that everyone else is perfect and I never am but thank you for giving me a gift today of feeling not so all alone. God bless you.
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Sending you a virtual high-five right now. I’m learning to love this way of living. Because there’s more to living than organizing the chaos. Sometimes to appreciate it, ya just gotta let it be chaos. Besides, there’s always tomorrow. And well, if there’s not a tomorrow then I want to have enjoyed today. ;) Great post!
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Oh Ash! Thank you for this. Your words are right on and I can honestly relate.
We read a book this summer called “Freedom From Performing.” There was a whole chapter devoted to giving youself permission to NOT be perfect. It was amazing and so… scary. And yet so freeing. So full of hope. Something I desperately needed to hear.
You know what? Jason walks downstairs every morning to find a clean shirt hanging in the laundry room, because they almost never make it up to the closet after being washed. We eat fast food at least twice a week. There are stickers on the dining room table, Caleb’s bedroom floor, and the window in the backseat of the car where he sits. Sharpie marker on the wall? Yep. Crumbs on the carpet? Yes, and popcorn kernels, too. Broken Christmas ornaments loved a little too roughly by small hands? Oh yeah.
You know what else? It’s ok. It really is. My son is loved. My husband is loved. They both know it. And those things on my TO DO list that didn’t get done today? They’ll wait for tomorrow. No one will die. :) That’s what I try to remember when my frustration rises and my words get sharp.
Love you!
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I am holding back tears (well, maybe a few might have spilled over…) I feel this all, tight in *my* chest. its like you are speaking my heart. (except I could have never so powerfully & eloquently put it into words!) thank you, friend! xo. -meg
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Oh, us perfectionists! I’m glad for those that bring perspective. :)
Today I’ve been worrying about the Christmas placemats I cut out 2 years ago that still haven’t been sewn and how we need something on the table for Christmas, but can’t use the table cloth because of messy baby hands. And our tree is STILL not decorated…not even with lights and I’m sure that the apple-cinnamon ornaments will break the second they touch little hands.
Sometimes I feel like the odd mama, because I have to work and remind myself to spend time and enjoy my family…to read the same books over and over again and lay on the floor to play trains.
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I needed this today. ::sigh::
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Somehow, I think in the middle of not being perfect, we find perfect moments that make bathrooms that have dirty mirrors and closets with clothes on the floor okay. :)
I love you for sharing how you do. <3
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It is true. None of it matters. The “fluff” doesn’t matter. What matters is people. What matters is love. What matters is real. What matters is love, being loved, giving love, feeling love.
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Amazing. Timely. Perfect post. I ♥ how you put it all into perspective. Thank you.
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Perfect timing. Thank you for sharing your perfectly beautiful way with words!
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conviction in my heart. yes, yes, i think to myself….on nearly a daily basis, when i read these types of things. let go; enjoy; live in the moment; prioritize correctly. and i know it is all true! but i am so on edge, so brittle right now. yelling, again, tonight while getting out (more) Christmas decor because they need me to do it, they need this season to feel happy, they need things to stay the same though they have fallen apart. “can’t you be happy, mom? can’t we have fun doing this?” they asked me. “YES! NO! YES! wait, NO!” my mind screams. then the tears come, along with the endless mommy guilt…. thank you for your heartfelt reminder here, and for the hope that a happy season will come again one day.
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That was beautiful.
Not to say that the woman’s world and her suffering in it are beautiful, but the perspective.
The way we struggle to see what counts when we’re up against so many that won’t let us.
Why doesn’t the rest of the world see that perfection is not what it’s about?
Why aren’t I surrounded by more people that realize the only thing that counts is what is 2 feet in front of your face.
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