My Kids Ruin Everything*

*Except the Things that Matter

We’ve just reached the end of spring birthday season at Hinds house. We have a whole new set of shiny, pretty, already broken toys to prove it. Remnants of thoughtful gifts are in pieces everywhere or lovingly covered in stickers.

This is not my child, but this is how my children use Legos.

My girls have about eleven baby dolls between them. These get carried around constantly and are all in various states of decay. One of the dolls has a nice face tattoo – I believe the medium was Sharpie. Since our babysitter is intimately acquainted with this kind of chaos, she bought each of the girls a new doll for their birthdays. All told, things were going well. Then, my older daughter asked her big brother to “babysit” her doll. He threw it into the glass sliding door (“She was jumping!”) and the head popped off, just like that.

Holding the disembodied doll head in her lap, my daughter looked up at me and said, “Mommy, maybe there will be a miracle.”

We might need one. In the past week, I found woodchips in the garbage disposal and the robot vacuum outside on the deck. One of my kid’s favorite games is to stuff single socks full of spare change and then hide them under the furniture. The only one who is more bothered by this than me is the poor robot vacuum.  

This is an interesting time to remind you that we are living with my mother-in-law. Her reactions – which can only be characterized by the word “serenity” –  to these events should be filed away as evidence for her eventual canonization.

If you feel as though you are living in a surrealist landscape populated by systematic and endlessly creative destructo-babies, then we have something in common.

My kids ruin everything.

Ultimately, it’s my job to create order in this chaos. But this thought helps me bring a little bit of a different perspective to the mess: some chaos is actually part of the order. If I were to have a board meeting with my four children, it would go something like this. Feel free to imagine my oldest in one of the sport coats he likes wearing to church.

Me: “You said you had a proposal.”

6yo: “We will be completely occupied while you’re working on dinner. I’m talking total immersion in a team-oriented activity.”

Me: “I’m listening.”

6yo: “We won’t even ask you any questions.”

Me: “What’s on the line?”

They glance at each other and exchange a round of nods.

6yo: “We’re going to cover the wooden toys in the play kitchen with dirt.”

5yo: “We think it looks like seasonings.”

1yo, tugging on his sister’s arm: “Gah-GUH.”

5yo: “Some of the dirt will be eaten.”

After a moment of pause, I ask, “What auxiliary items are you going to need for this? That is, in addition to the dirt from the backyard.” They whisper to each other, pointing at a sheet on the clipboard in front of them.

6yo: “One complete roll of clear packing tape.”

5yo: “13 sheets of copy paper.”

3yo, holding up a small rectangular piece of Styrofoam: “Don’t throw this away.”

1yo: “Gah-GUH.”

I steeple my index fingers and press them against my bottom lip. Then, pointing at them from oldest to youngest I say, “You can have 10 long pieces of packing tape. Two sheets of copy paper. I won’t throw it away today, but I’m not making any promises about tomorrow. Some dirt is fine, but not too much. You have the ok to move forward on this, but I am moving the play kitchen out of the sunroom when this is over.” We shake hands across the table.

There are pros and cons to most things, and mess is in that category. The next time you see a bona-fide destructo-baby masterpiece – in your kitchen, or on your couch, or in the bathtub (it’s happened here, I’m sure it’s happened to someone else) – don’t jump to the conclusion that this is bad, everything is bad, and you’re somehow doing a bad job. The charge that can be brought against you is this: you’re sharing your life with other people. The mess is the evidence of the love that goes with that. 

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On My Mind

I’m reading Come Be My Light by Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C. – it’s a collection of the personal correspondence of Mother Teresa (or Saint Teresa of Kolkota). The thing that is sticking with me throughout the day is this: this woman spent DECADES without receiving any consolation from God. That sense of God’s presence, which she had often experienced in her early life, just disappeared. She did tell her spiritual directors, who were able to identify this as a profound sharing in the sufferings of Christ and of the people she served. But she never told anyone under her own direction. Her global audience – an audience she didn’t want in the first place but embraced anyway – didn’t know about her terrible spiritual darkness until after she died. She’s the patroness of Those Who Aren’t Feeling It.

I ran into her (I often find that reading the writings of Saints is so visceral it feels like bumping into them) during the midst of what felt like an extremely important decision: whether or not I should start an Instagram account. The irony of this is that Jonny and I are in the middle of several much more important decisions.

My point here is that while the Saints might not have a specific answer to any of your questions, they will help you reorient.

Prioritization is hard.  

I suggest you take it to the pros.

-M