My home has gone from 7 full-time occupants to 3.5 in 2.5 years.
Why the .5 on the people?
.5 will be home occasionally.
We all know when you leave home, you really come back to visit. It isn't your "home" anymore.
These people pretty much left with a bag or two.
I have a house full of @(@*#(&#(*)(&#%^^$^ for 7 people.
My boys went back to school and my first mission was to clean their rooms. I am not an immaculate housekeeper but I used to clean them regularly.
It has been over 3 years since it was done.
I started with the easiest room. It was easier because 2 years ago when my oldest left, my middle hootiekin was given rights to the room. It went from kittens and 2 tone purples (I PROMISE the purple was palatable.) to a tanish color. He helped me paint it. Very excited to take over his big sister's old room. Now this fellow will return on holidays and for the summer. We are part owners of the room now.
I started on the second room. The second room used to be occupied by a person that no longer lives here. I saved money and gave this room to #4 hootiekin for his birthday. No more sharing. The pink glitter walls will go tomorrow. It will be filled with trains and race cars instead of horses, Celtic Thunder, Kasey Kane pictures and the guitar music she played. Might I add, she taught herself to play and is amazing. I cleaned it out once only to deliver belongings. I cleaned it out this time. Scrap booking stuff, a missing earing, a lost sock, pictures, half finished projects, a pink and brown rug all gone.
Taking down taped up pictures of Damien and Kasey brought me back to the night that I took my two daughters to a Celtic Thunder concert at the Fox theatre. My shy younger daughter was completely infatuated with Damien. The concert started. She was beside herself. I worried. There was an elderly couple seated right beside her. She was almost ready to explode with excitement. I had really splurged. We were in the 3rd row right in the middle. There for all the action. As close as I could get her.
Damien McGinty started to sing his first solo song.
My shy daughter released a shriek that cause damage in my right ear and then proclaimed the following, "AAAAAAHHHHHHH DAMIEN! AHHHHHHHHH!!!! DAMIEN, I LOVE YOU!" And then more of those shrieking noises were produced. Damien obviously heard it all because he stammered and what not on the stage. I was so worried for the couple beside her. After the show they came up and said they had never had so much fun at the Fox. They must have had many memories to relive on their way home.
Down the pictures went. Off of the closet door. Into the trash. I cant save everything. I can't.
A piece of my heart felt like it went into the trash too.
I breathed deeply. The rest of the closet followed.
I swept up spiders and webs and things I am not sure what they were but I heard them leaving. I wiped down the shelves.
The end of another era.
The next room. Oh golly. All I have to say is . . . AND ALL MOTHER'S WILL UNDERSTAND!!! It had been occupied by three boys and then 2 boys and was FINALLY only this youngest Hootiekin. He got his birthday present when I gave the other one his own room. That meant he too had his own space. I remember telling him. I said, "Guess what I am giving your brother for his birthday?" He guessed many things. I finally told him, "His own room." He digested the whole thing for a second and then his eyes lit up and he said, "That means I GET MY OWN ROOM TOO!!!!" "Yes." I said. "That is your birthday present."
Neither knew that for a mother this was a most expensive present for both of them. I could have kept the other doors shut and left them all in one room.
So, I head into the final room.
OH MY GOLLY!!!!!
MY EYES ARE WATERING. I CAN'T BREATH!!!!
AND WHAT IN THE DICKINS IS THAT PUTRID ODOR?????
I THINK THERE ARE DEAD CREATURES IN HERE!!!!
Really, I think my youngest was trying to create biological weapons.
He succeeded. I just wont tell him just yet.
I didn't realize how much I had avoided, couldn't do, or closed the door on while trying to deal with many things.
This next statement is for you mothers out there!!! I was finding clothes 3 years beyond being able to be worn and every size between for all seasons. I cannot ask a 10 year old to clean this!!!! I can't hardly handle it and I am a seasoned veteran.
It took me 10 hours. It still isn't done. But it will be today.
In order to finish the bedrooms upstairs, I knew this morning, "I HAD TO tackle the spare bedroom/storage room."
It started out that I just had clean sheets for the bed. Then one thing led to another.
Here I am. At a computer instead of cleaning.
Why?
Why did I feel compelled to stop my frenzy to type?
For me? For whom might read this? Maybe both.
Over the past several years and really over my whole life, the stories others share have helped me make decisions. Helped me know that others are not perfect either. Others cry, get mad, fall down, succeed, sin, repent, and everything in between. Some don't deserve the madness at all. Others know it is penance. All have shared how they "climbed the mountain."
Here I am.
My life. The most important parts of it are all coming out of the closets.
I found half eaten petrified bagels, notes, stickers, broken things I can't find that somebody hid because of whatever reason, clothes my mother gave me 'because these polyester dresses and suits are made so well and you can wear them' and I can remember how I admired my mother wearing them (she is amazing folks!!! Giving away those things are like giving away Superman's get-up or the Bat Mobile), small clothes, big clothes, dirty underwear, scissors, socks, dirty underwear, Christmas presents I hid, projects I never finished, ideas to make a perfect home, more dirty underwear (mother's of boys understand), dirty missing spoons, brown recluse spiders (we used to battle often but I had given them rights over the closets), and most of all my heart and soul for 20 years have gone into what I find in the closets.
Ill be darn.
There they are.
I put them in the closet too.
Funny. Aside from spider and silver fish, nothing lives there.
But, there in the closets are 20+ years of life.
All material goods. Funny how we, humans, attach such significance to the CRAP!!!
(Yes, I used that word for all that know me and understand my feelings on this word. In my dictionary, it is a naughty word).
Here I am facing the task of deciding what tangible memories stay or go.
Into the trash most of it violently went, has gone or is going.
I am a mother. I remember 10 years ago when I knew I would not have anymore children.
I couldn't have all of my baby items staring at me. I went through it all in a day. For me, that is remarkable. I packed up baby paraphernalia loaded it in my Suburban taking them to a home for mothers that chose to keep their babies and needed help.
At least my pain and material goods can help someone else.
I couldn't hold a new baby for years. I acted tough. Like I really didn't care to have a baby in my arms.
People would ask, "So, when is the next one?"
I'd smile and say whenever God blesses me with another. I'd love it.
Fast forward 10 years.
I am 10 years older. I feel I am there again in an odd way.
My household numbers are truly at a minimum.
For mothers it is very bittersweet.
I didn't even know what to do with my eldest daughter when they handed her to me. I felt like I was taking care of an alien.
To my children, I publicly say, being a mother has been the most wonderful, amazing, frustrating, charming, incredible thing ever. I deeply cherish you all. I have grown from each of you.
The most difficult thing for a mother is understanding the God given gift of free will and accepting it.
I am not God but I understand how dearly He loves us stupid children of His and why the gift of free will is truly a gift of love.
Here I am. The feast of St. Monica.
Patron of Mothers.
My patroness.
My middle name is Monica and my son's middle name is Augustine after her son.
I wrote this Saturday. Alone all weekend.
My dear friend saw me Sunday morning.
I arrived to Mass Sunday. Late, no hat or mantilla, no prayer book, and not feeling good enough to even enter the church but thinking I'll just be hanging out in the vestibule.
My bucket overflowed when I locked my keys in my car right before entering the vestibule.
I smiled and looked at her sweet baby. I wasn't jealous. It took be back to the many years I spent my time in the vestibule, cry room, bathroom or finally in the car with my own children.
I left. I didn't mean to make her feel bad.
It is fitting to finish this post today.
I leave it with this prayer/plea:
Dear Lord, PLEASE I humbly beg you to forgive my sins. Please do not let them come upon my own children. I have tried in the deepest depths of my soul to impart upon them Your love, truth, charity and dogmas. I have failed many times. Please, I implore You, the Blessed Mother, my patron saints (St. Margaret Mary and St. Monica), and my children's patron saints to intercede on their behalf.
My home and all of my material belongings can vanish but the souls of those whom I hold in my heart are my dearest treasures along with my dear Catholic faith.
Please dear God hear my cry.
Preserve the true faith here on earth and my children's souls into eternity with You.
St. Monica, St. Augustine, all of our children's patron's saints and dear Blessed Mother . . .
Ora pro nobis.
Mercy, my Lord and my God. Mercy.
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