Messes And Other Little Things

Hey, look!  It's 2013 already!  HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

The holidays have flown by, along with another month, once again.  Why does each year seem to get shorter and shorter?  It's frightening, really.

We ended one year and started another with a (quiet) bang.



Following our ritualistic abuse of a banana with a Sharpie, we spent much of the past two days just us two.  Daddy is back at work up north, as he is two-thirds of the time, so we're pretty used to Mummy-boy time.  It's good.



No, with all the stuff that's happened in the past year, it's more than good.  It's REALLY GOOD.  Soul-warming, heart-filling good.  Being with each other and connecting in all the lego-star wars-dinky cars-skating-toboganning-monopoly-cards playing-reading to each other ways.

Looking around at the hats and mitts and toys and games and boxes and cups littering what seems to be every square inch of the house, it kind of hit home for me last night leaving my mind to rocket with thoughts and words that needed to fly and my crochet-busy fingers itching to hit the keyboard.

Little things.

It comes down to the little things of which the debris of the moments speak...  Words left unsaid.  Kindnesses undone.  Efforts not made.  Conclusions jumped to.  Feelings not considered.  People left out.  A conversation that really needed to happen.  Time spent.  A helping hand.  The laughter.  Someone listened.  Walls dropped. Forgiveness born.

Friendships left to wither because of the little things.  Relationships nurtured by the little things.  Moments created that live in our memories as long as we have them.

In the end, I look around the endlessly messy rooms (didn't I just clean this up? or am I really this lazy?) and I realize it is nothing more than the setting of this life.  Nothing more or less than the staging for what happens in these walls.  The messes that are left speak of the moments that are meaningful.  In the end, I don't care that I'm not fastidious in my housecleaning.

(Actually, there'd have to be housecleaning happening in order to rate it.  And there isn't.)

The people who would judge me on that, or any other thing, are not the people who matter.

The people who judge me on what I eat or (more importantly) don't eat, don't matter.  Or on the amount of alcohol I choose to NOT have.  Or on the makeup of my family.  Or the activities we do or don't do.

Who knew a small town could be so judge-y?  (Keep your groans to yourself.)

This year has been a year of peeling back layers.  Exploring and rediscovering what lies under the preconceptions and misjudgements.  Yes, I make them too.  Finding out yet again who I am, and that it is US that matters.  WE do.  The person I am and the people that make up my family.  We are here in this every day... supporting each other, tearing each other down, building each other up, encouraging each other, and sometimes even standing back and letting someone fail or win on their own.  Life is dirty and painful and unpleasant at times.  We are only as good at it as we allow ourselves to be.

And in the end, it takes relaxing, looking around at the little things that make up our lives; the messes and laundry and toys not put away, and they all testify to moments lived hard and good.  

In the end, we forget the messes and remember the moments.