Growing Pains

Last night B woke up, twice, with leg cramps. This happens occasionally, and yesterday he was riding his scooter and showing me tricks for much of the afternoon. He wore out his little leg muscles and woke up in pain. As I rubbed his calf and listened to him whimper and hold his breath, I remembered waking with cramps when I was a kid. Lying awake in my bed feeling they would never go away. And then, just as quickly as they had come on, the cramps would disappear, the muscles would relax. I feel the same about the house mess we’ve all been living in. My mother always says that to clean a mess you have to make a bigger mess. And that is what we’ve been doing around here.

The reason I haven’t posted in a while is that we are in the process of revamping our living quarters on a scale that is approximately equal to moving to a new place, except that all the furniture is already in and is surrounded by plentiful clutter, and there are three children moving about and making their demands.

But we are rearranging everything for them. Our kids. So that they can have the two bedrooms upstairs. It’s time. I thought I’d be sad that J and I have to move our room downstairs. I am, a little. But I’m thrilled that we are revamping our crowded house in a way that I think (I hope) will be better for everyone. It means that we lose a room of living space downstairs, and that our bedroom will be in view of anyone coming into the house, but B and S need to be separated. Soon. They are so very different, and it has become very clear recently that they each need their own space. So B will get his own room, and the girls will share. And J and I will move downstairs. To accomplish this, every room of the house is undergoing a bit of an overhaul. Some more than others, but no room will be unaffected.

We are moving the mess from one room to the next as we figure out what bookshelf needs to go where, and if the TV will fit better on a smaller bureau. Which couch do we need to get rid of so that our bed will fit into the now-TV room? And can we really move ALL of the toys upstairs if the kids will have both bedrooms up there? We are literally living in cramped quarters, but we are doing our best to massage our way through until we all feel better. And one room at a time, I’ve been opening my eyes in utter amazement at our progress.

The first room to be done was my desk area, which for a while hasn’t been mine alone, since J moved in a desk for himself a few months ago. Since then, neither of us had used the space. Instead it had become a dumping ground for outdated baby paraphernalia, junk mail and indescribable miscellany that seems to take over our lives every now and then. But my sweetie surprised me last week. He brought home a huge bookshelf and informed me that he was going to remove his desk and give it to B for his room. Which left me with my desk space again, this time enhanced by a six-foot tall oak bookshelf big enough to house not only everything that had been stored under my desk, but my complete Wallace Stegner collection, all of my books about mothering, my poetry books, my books of essays and anthologies and all of the photo albums that the kids have done their best to destroy. There’s also room for the cedar chest that J bought me years ago so that I would have a place to keep all of my journals. Since we moved in we just hadn’t found the right place for it. Now I truly have a place of my own. I think J realized I needed this more than I did. I am ecstatic. I am grateful. And I am determined to keep it mine and to prevent all dumping-ground impulses.

Perhaps Sarah is the only one to truly understand the weight of all of this. But when we moved in, because I was pregnant, I didn’t do anything to help. J did it all, and he did a great job, but as the years have gone by and our needs from this house have changed, I have begun to realize that I’ve felt like I was living in a house that was not mine. This has taken its toll, and it is only as I come down the stairs to see the newly arranged living room–which soon will be the new room for hanging out–that I feel the relief and that I see my own impact on our living space. And after a long time of wondering how we were ever going to get it done and much frustration and impatience on my part, it’s happening. I’m sure the house will still feel cramped at times, but I’m hoping that we will have succeeded in making the space a better home for the five people who now live here.

Tagged as: chaos, Wallace Stegner

Read More in home, Jen Writes, three kids, Uncategorized