The House That Built Me

My daddy built our house. It was not very big by today’s standards. My first room was painted blue. I don’t really think Daddy was wishing for a boy, if he was he never made me feel like it. We had hardwood floors my mama fussed over. I could run and slide down the hall in socks. The bathroom was a neutral green and the inside of it’s closet was never finished, I’m not sure why but the furnace could be reached under the house by taking out a piece of plywood. You could also see the ground when it was moved and I was sometimes afraid a monster or witch would sneak up at night to get to me…I finally realized nothing was under there but dirt.
The kitchen was varnished pine with pink Formica countertops. There was a window over the sink that allowed a view of the big oak tree, the garden and assorted fruit trees. Huge old Hydrangea bushes peeked back in during summer months waving sky blue mop heads back and forth.
I remember playing under my mothers dining room table. My Barbie’s and baby dolls could often be found behind the tablecloths or in the upholstered seats of the fancy chairs. Every now and then Mama would let me help her polish the silver forks and spoons she kept in a special box in the china cabinet. There was a spoon, smaller than the rest with my initials on it. Mama said I used it when I was a baby.
We had a room we called the den. Daddy and I watched Bonanza, Ed Sullivan, Disney and the Flintstones on TV. At some point there was an aquarium with dozens of guppies and an orange Naugahyde couch. Neither made it very long. The guppies started eating their babies and the couch would stick to sweaty skin in the summer. Daddy decided after ten years or so to enclose the carport and make a new den. The old den became Mama’s sewing room and Daddy got a recliner and a fireplace. We all liked the addition but I kind of missed the sun coming in the kitchen window on winter afternoons. Mama insisted we needed a “sectional sofa”. I thought just a plain old sofa would have done the job with only three people in the family and Daddy in his recliner. We kept that gold couch for a long time. It made it through most of my childhood and two more houses.
When I was seventeen Daddy built us a new house. My mother tried to be happy about it but I knew she wasn’t. I was excited about picking the color of my new room even though I only lived there for a year before I left for college. I picked a light peach color with a slightly darker carpet. I got my parents mahogany bedroom furniture and a comforter that looked like a grown up. It made it easier to leave…since I didn’t grow up there I had no ties, no history, no openings where the witches and monsters could get in. I spent a couple of summers there but it never meant as much as the little brick house I grew up in.

There is a new Miranda Lambert song that inspired this note…I love her spunk and energy but this time she kinda tugged at my heartstrings.

My Reality Show Idea

I have a brilliant idea....Those with ADD know what comes next...I rant for an hour about my brilliant idea, then I lose interest in my brilliant idea and move on to the NEXT brilliant idea. This constant motion is a character flaw in us...those of us who have the "H" in ADHD. The truth is we can't help it, things tend to go unfinished especially if the idea is a long term commitment. (I wonder how many marriages have imploded due to one of the pair losing interest. For the record, I still find my husband very interesting.) I have a closet full of projects that I started and meant to finish. I have so many interests it's hard to pin me down to one. I have said many times I am good at a lot of things...NONE of which generate any income...they usually only generate OUTGO! But for unfinished projects I'd probably be a millionaire! I certainly am not, but...this brilliant idea has potential!!!
I have an idea for a reality show! Somebody needs to get me in touch with the people at Style or Discovery or HGTV. This would be a huge success. Ok, here's my idea.
Take "Super Nanny", "Clean House", "Hoarders" and "Extreme Makeover Home Edition"...put them all together and you have "Extreme Messy Family Makeover"! I am as serious as I can be. I want to be the first family turned in!
I can see it now. The bus pulls up and some hyper, super organizer people hop off and run to our door. They don't send us to Disney World for a vacation while they bomb our current house and start from scratch, they make us all stay and HELP! In fact, besides the dream team we are the ONLY help! They set up shop quickly, they line up my children....the five at home. The first thing we have to establish is it takes all seven of us to get this project off the ground. EVERYONE will participate. It's going to take two full days, huh, maybe weeks to work the magic necessary to get us done.
In the end I dream of us all standing outside in our freshly manicured yard staring up at the clean windows, the siding sparkling and the gutters clean. We are asked if we want to see what we accomplished in a matter of two weeks (or months maybe) we all nod and smile. In we go to see everything in a proper place, laundry all done and put away, kitchen gleaming, bedrooms spotless, tubs and toilets shining, closets easily open and nothing falls out! Quite the contrary, everything inside is filed and sorted. Bins and baskets hold every needed item, and for each tool a drawn outline to mark the spot where they go, where they are and where they will be returned to. Surely by now I am sobbing. There on the bulletin board is a chart with each of my children's names and a list of jobs they are expected to do each day starting with picking up their pajamas off the floor.
It is utopia! Paradise! I love it! Of course this is where I inevitably wake up and nothing has changed. But, I think my show has real promise…in the meantime if you want a brilliant project and you are NOT ADHD, call me.

Velveteen Rabbit

This week my granddaughter Aiden will turn two. I am holding out hope that the arrival of her little cousin Anderson will bring her to me soon but I don't want to wait to mail her gift. I want to give her the book The Velveteen Rabbit. I have always liked the story but it didn't really mean as much to me until now. There is a part in the story where the old rocking horse tells the rabbit what it means to be real. He says that real is a thing that happens to you when a child loves you for a long, long time. He goes on to describe what happens to you before you are real and the kind of people who never become real, "people who break easily, or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept." He tells the rabbit that by the time you are real most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. Yep, I'm real. I didn't know it until I got the book out for our little Elle at five. I was reading this part and started to choke back tears, she asked me if I needed to just stop reading, she's a compassionate one. I finished the book but I kept thinking about it.
What is real? My Raggedy Ann was real. She was my friend when I was a child. I suppose she was my security blanket, my one thing that helped me go to sleep when I was afraid. She went with me to college, took her place on my bed with the pastel pillows. It sounds silly but I couldn't leave her behind just yet. I would trade her soon enough for a grown up life.
I believe we are real because God wants us to be. I believe he puts children in our lives to teach us what that looks like. We teach them to be honest; they test us when we are in situations when a lie might be easier. They watch us in our relationships with others. They ask themselves if they are loving like mommy or truthful like Daddy. It is their love that makes us want to be those things. We start to look worn out and frayed to the world but we are more precious to them when we lose all pretenses and become who we were meant to be.
It is in our frailties we discipline them. We are not perfect, we can't expect them to be perfect, we can only hold them up to God and ask for his wisdom in our ignorance. Unfortunately many parents don't become real until it is too late for their own children. It is most often grandchildren who take on the job of making us real. I am thankful that God gave me young children at my age. I feel very honored
and blest to have them in my life. And when they tell me I'm soft in the middle or my hair has silver in it I smile. They aren't trying to hurt my feelings they are telling me what I already know, I am becoming shabbier and loose in the joints, they have loved me into real.