A clear glass vase with an extended narrow opening and a large, bulbous base sits on a pretty, wooden table in our house. I like beautiful things and when I look at that vase, all alone on the table, I feel glad. Early one morning, as I made my way to the bathroom, slits for eyes and hair flying wild, I was all of a sudden awake. Stopped dead in my tracks, suffering as one does when someone scratches a chalk board, I noticed something like very unwell goldfish swimming in murky water in the vase. On closer inspection, eyes wider than they even are at noon, hair feverishly smoothed into place, I discovered that cornflakes and their milk were in my vase. Look, I mean, the vase belongs to us all, I cannot say it is only mine. And I encourage my husband and children to have freedom of expression and a sense of ownership in these spaces of our home. We are all allowed to decorate around here. But who would do that!? No cornflakes or milk on the table tells me that it wasn’t a small child. Would a child old enough to have great hand-eye-coordination have stooped so low so as to get rid of their breakfast into something so unlike a dog’s bowl or a dustbin; something so transparent and delightful?
One of my friends has four sons. In the face of such opposition she creates the most gorgeous, feminine displays. Delicate curtains flutter in gentle breezes and pot plants flourish beside clean, white, wooden furniture. Once, she discovered that her arrangement of books (probably poetry ones,) candles, flowers and antique teddy sitting on a shelf, minding their own business, had been interrupted by a fleet of hungry, angry plastic dinosaurs, no doubt left by one of her sons, helping to create home. Or waging war on the teddy, more like it. C.S. Lewis says that reading about battles and heroes will mean that our children understand what to do when they face real enemies, and so it’s very good, I think, that the goodies and baddies were fighting it out there on that shelf, but a mother’s nerves, folks! Is there nothing sacred?
I am flummoxed. Here I am trying my utmost to usher heaven on earth here for my family and the forces coming against me are non other than my own “ungrateful-for-the-breakfast” offspring. Glorious as our children are, they will knock every rough edge off, add a decade to any facial lines, keep us out of idle gossip and time-wasting activities and ruin every chance for us (and our houses) to look overly respectable and think too highly of ourselves? I have one child who keeps pulling on my clothes to get my attention and I am going to lose my trousers in public if I am not careful. But I keep trying. I choose dresses rather because my shoulders hold them on and I create whimsical little still-lifes all over the show so that the children can leave their apple cores and dinky cars and crumpled pieces of tissue paper beside them.
If I’m honest, I would like to create something perfect. Shining floors and pillows on couches, constantly plump and in position. I would like the baking to stay, untouched, on the kitchen counter where it is cooling. If the toilets could always be spotless and the doormats at the doorways look like new. But then what? Who would it all be for? What would be the point? Rather, the floors are swept so that our crumbs can fall on them and we can sweep them up again later. The couches are there to be sat on or slept on or even, horrors, roly-polied on. Toilets that need my attention are a good sign that I have a family who are well-nourished and growing. Crumpled, muddy doormats tell me that we have a garden and that they have been playing in it. The house and its contents are here to serve us. The people here make the property come alive! It moves and sways under our feet and in our hands like it is dancing.
.
A long time ago, we lived on a dear little street in London. I should stress little. Look, I am not a bad driver, but navigating such tight spaces takes a lot of practise, and one day, whilst reversing, I managed to knock a neighbour’s gate pillar over. I stopped, rested my head on the steering wheel for a moment and then got out of the car for the most terrifying five metre walk of my life. The door opened as soon as I knocked and as I began to explain and apologize simultaneously, the man let me have it. He yelled right into my face about how often this had happened whilst his little wife looked on worriedly over his shoulder. I am not sure if he actually spat on me, but I felt positively spat on. I promised we would fix it and when my darling who can do anything got home that evening, I had to apologise to him too for offering his services without first asking him. The weekend was spent making friends with the people whose property I had damaged. My weekend builder husband suggested a different design and created something new and improved that had the neighbours thrilled. That’s one way to meet your neighbours, I can tell you lots of other ways another time, but the sad thing is that we both (the shouting man and me) had to live with the memory of how he exploded the day I made a mistake and ruined something belonging to him. My unintentional error, which gave them a much lovelier wall in the end, was smudged with regrets.
During a season of transition my husband, small children and I stayed with my parents for a time. My mother and I spent our days minding the children and cleaning up after them. It was a full time job. When we moved on, I imagined my parents sitting in silence – everything clean and orderly at last. “What relief for them,” I thought happily. I got a message, however, that simply said “The house is spotless and I hate it.” Most broken things can be fixed or replaced. When stuff gets dirty it can be cleaned. Harsh responses take a long time to wash off a soul. Our homes shouldn’t be elevated to such a point they are like cathedrals where we must only whisper, kneel and pray. A person is always more valuable than a place. Humans are eternal spirits but all this stuff is going to blow up one day and we certainly can’t take it to the grave with us. Plus we can have conversations forever now about the time one of the family clowns thought it would be clever to pour their breakfast into my work of art.
Leave a Reply