Homemaking and Legos

 It's Monday.  I think?  Ken took all last week off, so we had a really great nine days of family time.  It's funny, in a time and place where the pandemic is making our world feel so much smaller and claustrophobic, a big chunk of time when the eight of us got to hunker down together was somehow the exact medicine we needed.

But now it's Monday.  Ken left for work early and the majority of the kids are sprawled out in the living room, 6,503,321 pieces of lego sprawled out with them, rebuilding lego city*.  They're touchy and discombobulated today with their dad gone to work so early after such a nice vacation with him.  Plus we ran out of coffee yesterday, so they're kind of zombie-esque to boot. 

We started decorating for Christmas around here.  Which was just what I needed.  Not only on a "this year has sucked and has been one long AdveLent**, so let's bring in some brightness and joy" level, but also on a more superficial level.  

I've somehow started following a lot of homemaker accounts on Instagram.  Maybe you know the type.  Accounts run by women who view creating a peaceful, beautiful, loving home as a vital way they serve God.  I really like this section of the 'Gram, women who see being a housewife and homemaker as something dignified and necessary and artistic and spiritual.  It speaks to a part of me that has carried around a sense of guilt and defensiveness and inferiority for leaving the workforce to raise my children and build a home.  It's funny, because while I knew that baggage was there, I don't like looking at it very often because it smacks of such privilege to me.  "Oh look, the middle class white lady with a stable marriage and healthy children is feeling bad about staying home and not working".  But whether I look at it or not, the baggage is there, and it rises to the surface in angry, aggressive ways from time to time.  Like how touchy I am when I suspect someone thinks I don't work.  99% of the time, the other person hasn't said any such thing, but I project so much insecurity on them that my dander is up and I'm angry at a slight that never happened.

So seeing women who have ostensibly either worked through this guilt and sense of undeserved decadence or never wrestled with it in the first place is a nice challenge to my mental landscape.  Maybe, just maaaaaybe I don't have to be full of self loathing because I really enjoy being home and raising the kids.  I don't know.  Even typing that last part out feels dangerous and indulgent.  

My reptile brain, in its constant attempt to make sure I'm nicely packed full of self-doubt, has started telling me that the home I've made doesn't match up to those homemaker accounts.  Those houses are all cream and warm wood.  Those houses are all bright and uncluttered, or, if there is excessive ornamentation, it's heirlooms and vintage and handmade.  Those houses are calm and serene in their color palate and decoration.

Then there's my house.  My house is a riot of colors and textures and patterns.  My house is dusty and the 80 year old windows have a permanent film on them that diffuses the afternoon light nicely, but gives off a definite "hoarder house" vibe.  I worry that my children have grown desensitised to messes and chaos and won't be able to recognise God in beauty and order***.

A beautiful, serene house from Esther Hanten

And then there's my house

But then we prepped the living room to put up the Christmas tree yesterday.  We moved furniture around to make space.  Moving the furniture meant we had to extra sweep, because it unearthed dust bunnies and lego bricks that had been unseen and forgotten.  Sweeping led to mopping.  Mopping meant we could go pick out a tree and bring it home.  Bringing a tree home meant we could get out the Christmas decorations, which meant that we could cut down greenery from outside and heap it on the mantles and piano.  

When it was all done, I sat in a newly repositioned couch and looked at the room.  It felt beautiful.  It felt serene and welcoming and good.  Even with turquoise walls and riot of patterns that always horrifies my 18 year old art student, it still had the same sense of contentment that those homemaker IG accounts radiate.  Then the kids dumped their 6 million lego bricks on the floor and sort of ruined the vignette, but it was ok because I could let myself accept that messes are part of making a home.

I'm sure there's some lesson in here about everyone being a unique creation of God, and that beauty doesn't come in one standard expression, and filling a home with love is more than keeping it clean and tidy and blah blah blah.  I won't insult you by spelling it all out.  But I will say this- sometimes moving the furniture around and letting the kids dump the legos on the floor is exactly what you need to feel more comfortable in your own skin.  

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* Lego City is the panic project I had them start in April, when all of New England went from normal to total lockdown over the space of 2 weeks.  The kids hauled out a folding table, set it up in the living room, and began making a very complex, very weird city.  It kept them happy and occupied during April and May, and by the time planting season was underway, I banished it to the basement because I couldn't stand looking at it anymore.  Three days ago I let them bring it back upstairs and there was much rejoicing. And then I found $20

** prnounced "AD-vuh-lent" and it means the penitential state we've all been enduring since this spring.  I just made it up and I'm going to copyright it and make a million dollars off royalties

*** Yes, I realize how ridiculous and melodramatic this sounds.  Can't help it though.  My reptile brain is dumb