Author: Judy Hanawalt (Page 16 of 23)

Shitty first drafts. Butt in chair. Just do it. You own everything that happened to you. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart–your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it’s why you were born
–Anne Lamott

These words are posted on my desktop to remind me of why I write. When I sit down to write, I often ask myself, “What wants to be written?” Those thoughts and stories and ideas that I can’t get off  my mind, the ones that nag me and want to be told, are the ones that need to be told.

Today, I didn’t finish the post I started for the best of reasons. Life got in the way. My daughter and her husband decided to come up for the afternoon. They both had the day off, it was too hot in their apartment, and they wanted to try out a new brewery in town. So instead of writing, I was talking and laughing and sharing beer and cheese and pickled vegetables at a long, sticky table in the cooling Berkeley evening.

Now that  dinner–our favorite Zachary’s Chicago style pizza– is over,  conversations have quieted down and everyone is moving toward bed, I have a few minutes to keep my writing streak going.

So I end this day with Anne Lamott’s words of wisdom.

I own everything that has happened to me, and it’s my work to tell it in my voice, from my perspective. That, after all, is all I have to offer.

I hope that, when I write it down, it won’t be merely a record of what has happened to me, but an honest expression of the joys, the mysteries, and the fears that are common to us as moms, as women, and as people. I want to write the story that resonates and encourages us as we journey together through life.

I’m probably not going to astonish you with great revelations–sometimes all I manage to write is a little anecdote–but I will try to be truthful about what I see and what I know.

So, here’s to those first drafts and those stories that tug at our hearts. I’ll have my butt back in the chair tomorrow.

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.