Year: 2015 (Page 5 of 10)

Dobby: “Dobby knows the perfect place, sir! Dobby heard tell of it from the other house-elves when he came to Hogwarts, sir. It is known by us as the Come and Go Room, sir, or else as the Room of Requirement!”
Harry Potter: “Why?”
Dobby: “Because it is a room that a person can only enter when they have real need of it. Sometimes it is there, and sometimes it is not, but when it appears, it is always equipped for the seeker’s needs.”
— Dobby telling Harry Potter about the Room of Requirement

We have a little room in our house, between the kitchen and the back door, that is almost more of a large hallway. It has a door to the back hall near the bathroom and the stairs, a door into the kitchen, and a door out to the patio. There are no windows, but the patio door has a glass pane in it.

It is our Come and Go Room, and it has been equipped for many “seekers’ needs” over the years.

When we first moved in, it was a bedroom. Our oldest had just started university when we moved to a smaller house, and she got the little half-room since she wouldn’t be living there full time. We closed off the door to the back hall, put up a curtain rod to make a little closet, and arranged her queen-size bed, dresser and bookshelf  so there was just room to scoot around the bed.

When she wasn’t home, her room was the guest room. All the other rooms were full, with the boys in the largest upstairs room, and the other girls in the three bedrooms downstairs.

Soon, a nephew needed a place to stay, so the Come and Go Room became his home. He stayed with us for a few months until he got settled, found a job and some friends to room with, and moved out. I remember him sitting on the bed, strumming his guitar, and chatting with me as I made dinner.

After he left, my sister came to visit and ended up staying and living with us to escape an abusive home situation. She brought my two nieces and two nephews and her golden retriever for a nine-month stay. We bunked the nephews in with the the boys, and put my sister and two nieces in the Come and Go Room, this time blocking the door to the kitchen with a double-on-the-bottom, twin-on-the-top bunk bed, putting an armoire on the opposite wall and a chair in the corner.

We have one bathroom upstairs, so shower times were tightly scheduled in the morning to accommodate nine people sharing it. My sister and I took turns cooking for the twelve people crowded around the dining room table for dinner each night. The frustrations of living so tightly packed wore on us all–whether because of my nephew’s legos all over the living room, or the nervous dog peeing on the floor–but I have fond memories of the time spent with my sister, co-mothering our broods.

My sister and her family got their feet on the ground and moved out, and I was overdue for some peace and quiet. All three doors were opened, out came the bed and armoire, and in it’s place, we put in a small daybed and added built-in bookshelves. Now, it was the library and occasional guest room for one.

I had a quiet room, but not much quiet time, so it ended up becoming a locker room for our athlete son. Football gear and millions of little black pellets from the artificial-turf field covered the floor. At least it was close to the washer and dryer so I could keep up with the stinky uniforms and socks.

My husband decided to start a consulting business and needed a home office. With kids still in the bedrooms, the natural place was the Come and Go Room. The daybed was exchanged for a large desk and office chair, and he set up shop. The doors were not blocked, but they were closed during the work day. I would sneak in occasionally with a question or to let the dog out into the back yard.

The business grew, and my husband left his home office for an office-building office. The room changed again, back to a guest room, but this time we put in a couch that made into a bed and added a little desk. The big desk moved downstairs to the Hobbit Room (a tale for another day), so I could spread out my scrapbooking materials down there.

Another nephew, in the Bay Area for a summer internship, made his home in the Come and Go Room then. He endured the traffic of people coming and going through his room for summertime activities in the backyard. He left in the fall for school, and our dinnertime discussions immediately took a less scholarly tone.

With some open space again, sports began to take over, and the room held rugby gear, bikes, and eventually,  books, backpacks and anything else my son didn’t carry to his room, now located downstairs.  (More on all this moving around here.)

Recently, one of my daughters came home and wanted to make the room downstairs more of a comfortable, inviting gathering spot. This required getting the big desk out. So, we swapped the desk for the upstairs couch, and the Come and Go Room is back to being an office. It was good timing, because my husband started working at home every Friday.

This is a good set-up. It’s a pleasant room, close the kitchen and the coffee pot. I have started using it to work on my writing, except on Friday. Maybe it will stay this way for awhile–until someone needs it for something else.

To survive being the mother of a large family, you either have to be the super organized kind of mom, or nearly  the opposite, the laid-back kind. There’s just too much going on to stay in the middle of the road. With any family, but perhaps more noticeably in a home with lots of kids, mom either has to keep all the schedules, tasks and needs in order, or she has to be able to tolerate some amount of disorder.

I am the second type, but I’ve never liked the term “laid back.” It sounds like that mom is lazy, or literally laying down on the job. I prefer the term calm, casual or maybe unflappable.

The super-organized moms are the ones you see in magazines and reality shows. In those households, everything hums along, chores are cheerfully done, school work is fun and creative, everyone is in line and the rows are straight. I know families like this–they do exist–and I admire them tremendously. I love the idea of it.

We’re not that family. It causes me more stress to keep my home that way than it does to live with a little clutter, some dust bunnies, and dishes in the sink. So, a big hairy dog will rush you at the door, the bathroom may have toothpaste smeared on the mirror and dinner will likely be running a few minutes late, but we’re happy and healthy.

It’s not that we don’t try. It’s just that we can’t quite get ahead of it. I’m sure I should have delegated more responsibility, and maybe I should have doled out harsher consequences for missing dish duty.

My kids have turned out to be good roommates, though, which is some measure of what they learned at home. I hear them complaining that they are the only ones in their house or apartment that do dishes, vacuum or clean the bathroom. This is a great mystery to me, because they were not doing this at home with any regularity.

I’m so relieved that I didn’t completely ruin them by not having the Good Housekeeping dream family. I suspect that maybe the organizational level of the home doesn’t really matter that much. We don’t want the health department to have to intervene, but it seems a more casual approach may be good enough.

Every family is somewhere on the organizational and neatness scale. Your home reflects your family’s personality and values, and doesn’t have to look like a magazine spread to be great.

I’m not the person to come to for how-to’s on how to get more done in a day, or how to finally conquer your clutter. If you want to talk about how crazy and exhausting and amazing it is to be a parent, or about getting through hard times with your kids one day, one hour or one prayer at a time, I have lots to say. With so many kids, I have plenty of experience with that.

Well, it’s actually text and call. I’m at my kids’ text and call.

When something comes up–problems, joys, news, questions, plans–I get a text. Or I send one. Whole conversations take place over text. I started texting when it became the most reliable way to get a hold of my kids. When they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) answer a phone call, they would read and respond to a text.

In the days of flip phones, it was terse, more like a telegraph, with just the bare minimum of words– “Get home now, ” or “Where are you?” Now that we have a full QWERTY keyboard at our fingertips, texts have expanded.

They can be surprisingly personal. Everybody has their own texting accent. Some are standard English, complete with proper puctuation, others are slapdash, with short phrases, periods and question marks optional. Some use slang and abbreviations, others are wordy and descriptive.

With or without frills–emojis, pictures, videos, links–personality comes through. The other day, one of my texters sent me this message about lunch in his distinctive style: “Yo that sandwich was on schmack.” I’m pretty sure that means he liked it.

Even serious conversations take place this way.  I’ve informed the family of sad news, like the death of an elderly family member, over group text. With everyone seeing and responding to each other’s texts, it is a sweet way to be together in  sad times

When the text hints at something bigger, I follow up with a call. Making or answering a call is a bigger time commitment than tapping out a text. Texters can multitask; they can be in public, in a meeting, in class, even in the bathroom and carry on a full conversation. With a phone call, more attention is needed, and it requires stepping away from other people and activities.

A text came the other day, “Mom, I’m really wrestling with whether or not college is right for me right now.” This needed more than a few cheery words. I called and learned that a bad situation with a roommate had gotten to be too hard. When I can hear the tone in a voice, or the tears behind the words, I can get a better sense of what is going on and be a support and encouragement.

Because so much talking is done via text, phone calls have become the long, newsy, handwritten letter of modern communication. On the phone, we can have a good, old-fashioned chat. Quick calls don’t happen as much; when we get on the phone, conversations can sometimes last an hour or two, like a remote coffee date.

I am so glad I can be at their text and call–I love having the space in my life to be available to connect with them when life happens. They leave home, but they are still often on my mind. A little text–or maybe a long phone call–lets them know they are loved.