Tuesday, December 3, 2013

A Messy House at Christmas

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As I have mentioned in this blog on many occasions, my wife and I have six boys. While I do not claim to be an expert father, there are several things that I can state with relative certainty.

1. Doing the laundry is a never-ending task.
The amount of clothing that six boys soil on a daily basis is worthy of mention as a potential cause of global warming. The alacrity with which they defile clean and folded piles of laundry is mesmerizing. If you have ever seen children playfully destroying a pile of leaves on an Autumn afternoon, then you have seen a picture of what my sons do to a pile of clean laundry each and every day. My wife often describes it as Groundhog Day.

2. Grownups are the only humans capable of flushing a toilet. The faux chrome handle on a toilet has apparently been ergonomically designed to make it impossible to be used by anyone under the age of 12. Whatever water we save by not flushing we use in futility to attempt to address the previous item on the list. I call it neutralizing our carbon footprint.

3. Clutter is the new order. "Ordo ab Chao." Out of chaos comes order. We live by these words. We live by them not as a life choice but mostly because in our lives we have no choice. In the popular Back to the Future movies of the 1980's, the danger in time traveling was that if you altered the past in some way you would create an alternate reality and thusly a paradox which would inescapably unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum. We live in that alternate reality.  And a flux capacitor doesn't help. Unless it could somehow help with the aforementioned laundry.

Growing up, my house was perfectly ordered at almost all times. I used to attribute that reality to a combination of my father being partially OCD and my wife and I's total failure as parents. I now realize that it was simply a numbers game. People in parenting circles talk about the huge difference between having 2 and 3 children. They talk about how much harder everything is once you are outnumbered as parents by your children. I think Jim Gaffigan said it best. "If you want to know what having 5 children is like just imagine that you're drowning...and someone hands you a baby." Messiness is relative.

Nevertheless, my parent's house remains impeccably clean. Each time we visit, I become aware of the pandemonium we bring to the party. That is the reality they live in and I love them for it. Whenever we arrive at their home, my wife and I often leave the children in the van in the driveway and just go inside and breathe in silence for a moment; knowing that all the pristine we see will shortly be destroyed by our spawn. Chao ab Minivan. Out of the minivan comes chaos.

Perhaps the difference between the way you keep your home and the way your parents keep theirs isn't that apparent. Regardless, you have a general idea of how your mom and dad keep their home on average. As you visit this holiday season, be sure to pay attention to changes in that process. If your aging parents are usually very particular about the way things are kept around the house and suddenly that isn't case then something could potentially be wrong. Keep in mind that what you see during a holiday visit is the E-harmony version of the truth. They have undoubtedly cleaned and prepared for your arrival. If bills are piling up, if laundry is piled up, if basic home maintenance and upkeep is being neglected then a conversation is probably in order. Growing older like having six small children is not for the faint of heart. Both stations in life require help from time to time. If you walked into my home and offered to help, it might be difficult to tell you exactly how you could. Only through conversation and observation would you be able to determine the best way to assist. (Reader hint: free babysitting) Similarly, seeing things are out of place in your parent's home won't automatically give you the answer for how to help. Spend some time getting to know what life is now like for them before you attempt to present potential solutions. The best Christmas gift you give them this year could simply be to look and listen.

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