This is the house my kids will destroy
We moved into this house, our first, five years ago. As a new parent and new homeowner, I rushed to make my mark: fresh paint, window treatments, light fixtures, and our first couch that didn’t need to double as a bed. I sought champagne perfection on a beer budget, brainwashed by an HGTV narrative that all you need to flip a 30-year-old living space is three weeks, some trips to Crate and Barrel, and a commercial break. We did well with the resources we had, though. And within a couple of months, the space felt like home. I was proud of our work and my constant effort to keep things nice; and yes, the effort was constant.
That winter, at our daughter’s first birthday party, I taped a plastic tarp down to the living room floor for the babies to eat their snacks on. I thought, the rug is safe, the moms aren’t stressed about ruining our rug, what a win-win. Until I pulled it up and took the finish of our wood floors off with the tape.
I won’t lie – I cried. This was the first dramatic blow to our picturesque home. It was like a table scape at a wedding, perfectly hash-tagged and carefully curated until the first glass of red wine hits that white tablecloth. My tears were irrational, sure, but tell that to someone who’d been posting monthly milestone photos of a baby in giant headbands all year. Nothing made sense but seeking perfection. Unfortunately, like the finish of our floors, my expectations were about to be destroyed.
That sweet croissant of a baby learned to move, and the feet of her plastic walkers and wheels of her ride-on rocket ship scraped doughnuts across the foyer. She became a scavenger, picking fillers out from between our floor planks, tiny treasures like lightning bugs. She sneezed while laughing and threw up orange Cheez-It’s on her bedroom rug. And then came her little sister, an Olympic water chugger with the world record for peeing through diapers and discoloring leather. They bumped and bruised the walls with wizard wands. I bumped and bruised the walls with laundry baskets. When the pandemic began, we fumigated the house with Lysol, realizing maybe it’s not meant for that, only moments too late.
My well-being rests on being clean. It always has. So in the beginning, having children felt like psychological warfare. I spent so much time trying to erase what they did, and I’m not sure what I was trying to accomplish. Maybe a piece of me couldn’t accept that my life looked different than it did before, or maybe I just needed to control our physical environment to offset all the things I couldn’t handle.
Nevertheless, my attempts were futile – the children were winning.
As they grew and this house became something we shared rather than something I prepared, I knew I had to change. Not them.
And truthfully, I loved watching them live and grow in this space. During the extended time we’ve spent at home, they have been the only beautiful things worth watching.
Yes, they’ve rubbed greasy fingerprints on the brand new leather chair. They’ve soaked slime puddles deep into the basement carpet. We’ve pilled our daybed with tickle fights and burned the oak table with our Hannukah candles. I don’t consider these things domestic casualties anymore. I think of them as a broken-in baseball mitt or your favorite old purse. I can tell you why our piano has a dent in it. Why there’s a hole in our daughter’s bedroom wall – her baby monitor used to hang there. Even she now can see how things have changed.
A home with small children is not a mausoleum. It is a living, breathing place, shaped with our stamps of wonder, and tears, and tantrums, and joy. These are the marks we leave as we evolve, and accepting them is our way to savor what’s happening all around us. In this moment in time, in a home that’s become our whole lives this past year, we can clean. But we don’t need to erase.
Because it won’t be this way forever. Our kids will grow up. They will stop drawing gel pen hieroglyphics on the walls, and we’ll be able to buy our fancy rugs. We will have our HGTV moments. And we may not miss this time, but for me, I’ll appreciate what was. Before we fix the floors, or repair the walls, or before we move altogether, we’ll think, look at what we did here. We’ll have touched every inch.
The little things
Never underestimate the powers of one small roll of wallpaper. With a peaceful floral jazzed up by silver sheen, it transforms the square dressing area between our bedroom and bathroom into what Hazel deems the “Style Room.” A mini chandelier from PB Teen tops it off. Best of all, this is one upgrade the girls can’t mess up.
Also
We’ve reached a major crest in the #FreeBritney movement. This week, a judge suspended Jamie Spears from his daughter’s conservatorship, right on the heels of her engagement to long-time boyfriend, Sam Asghari.