My husband and I have two sons: a thirteen-year-old and a
one-and-a-half-year-old. This means that we get the joys of parenting a fresh
teenager and a toddler, at the exact same time.
We buy our bottles of Excedrin at Costco.
Our older son, Nolan, has developed a passion for writing
with a quill, exactly like Benjamin Franklin used to do. Never mind the luxury
that is a good gel pen; those are entirely too new-age for our boy, regardless
of the nerdy joy they bring to his mama. As far as heʼs concerned, America
started to decline when the fountain pen and whittled turkey feather became old
fashioned. Nolan has begun to collect old pens. He can talk about a fountain
pen collection exactly like an old man, wearing a cardigan sweater that smells
of mothballs. And still, we are head over our heels in love with that boy.
As every Gatherer Of
Ye Olde Pens knows, if youʼre going to put your collection to good use, you
need pots of ink. Black ink... red ink... or dark berries that have been run through
the electric, Ninja mixer, exactly as Lewis and Clark used to do before writing
in their journals... it doesnʼt matter. You just canʼt fancy-up your scrollwork
without a pot of ink to accompany your quill.
The most commonly-spoken phrase at our house, other than,
“Whatʼs for dinner?” is, “Did you put the lid on your ink?” Because a bottle of
India ink WITHOUT the lid is more dangerous in a household with boys than a
flamethrower.
Two weeks ago, I forgot to ask this question.
It was a Thursday morning. I was in the shower, because Iʼd
already determined that I had errands to run that day that would require something
a little fancier than the standard mom outfit of black yoga pants and unwashed
hair. When you have a toddler who climbs more things than Spider-Man does, you
come to cherish your alone time in the hot shower.
I may have taken longer to shave that Thursday. I probably
stood in the shower with my eyes closed and my forehead resting on the
fiberglass wall while the hot water just ran down. I may even have considered
finally following the instructions on the bottle of shampoo: Wash, rinse,
repeat. Because the repeating? Well, it allows for extra alone time, before you
have to get out, dry off, and pull Spider-Man off of the kitchen counters and
feed him a breakfast of steel-cut oats and homemade yogurt.
Or SʼMores flavored Pop Tarts. Whichever.
When I finally DID get out of the shower that morning, I suddenly
realized that there was some busyness
and noise going on in our house that
would have put the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange to shame.
I pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt (which is ever-so-very-much more fancy than the aforementioned
black yoga pants and T-shirt), wrapped a towel around my hair, and opened the
bathroom door to complete pandemonium.
Do you know what a mother enjoys hearing on a Thursday
morning, just thirty minutes before she has to get the 7th grader to school?
“The baby grabbed an
open bottle of India ink off Nolanʼs desk; we have ink EVERYWHERE!”
It was true.
A small bottle of India ink can hold about an ounce. When
you turn it upside down onto a bedroom floor, itʼs exactly like a tiny, import
car full of clowns at the circus: About thirty-four gallons of ink will spill
out.
Our toddler looked like the tar baby from Brer Rabbit. My
husband, who had decided to grab that tar baby from the middle of the
catastrophe, to prevent further explosions, was stained with the result of his
courage. Nolan was scrambling for TOWELS! TOWELS! WE NEED WET TOWELS! And there
I stood, taking it all in.
Nash, age one, was covered in ink. His LOANED-TO-US-AS-HAND-ME-DOWNS-
THAT-NEED-TO-BE-RETURNED-BECAUSE-THEYʼRE-HAVING-MORE-BABIES-AT-
THEIR-HOUSE footed pajamas were black. The dinosaurs on those
jammies were no longer recognizable. My husband, Jim, was standing at the
bathroom sink, furiously trying to scrub ink off of his own face. The area rug
in Nolanʼs bedroom looked like a crime scene; it only lacked the yellow tape
wrapped around the door and a detective standing nearby with a donut in one
hand, as he nodded and said, “It looks like the perpetrator carried the ink
from the desk to HERE... and then... just turned it upside down.” Nolan was on
his hands and knees, scrubbing OUR BELOVED HARDWOOD FLOORS with a wet bath
towel.
Of course, it was one of our better bath towels, because at
this house, we have better bath towels, not-so-good-any-more bath towels, and
the bath towels that are frayed enough to be relegated to YOU CAN TAKE THIS ONE
TO THE LAKE AND WRAP UP ALL THE FROGS YOU CATCH WITH IT. This isnʼt the
Ritz-Carlton around here, with all of their Egyptian cotton towels that fluff up
to be the size of a Volkswagen bus.
Someone might just have well announced, “Your house is on
fire!” that Thursday morning; it would have created the same level of adrenaline
explosion inside of me, all before Iʼd had my cup of coffee.
Jim came back from our master bathroom, and his face was
relatively clean. I was happy for that, because itʼs kind of hard to explain
stuff like that at the office. Of course, he was missing his top layer of
epidermis, but he was stain-free.
We all burst into action that morning, which is so much fun,
when youʼre driven by the ticking of the clock and the threat of a pink tardy
slip for your 7th grader. We scrubbed exactly like Cinderella hopped up on a
decent cold medication, while we listened to Nolan chant, “Iʼm so sorry! Iʼm so
sorry! I forgot to put the lid on my ink!”
Nash was left to stand there, as black as the sin of dumping
out India ink indoors, while we fought to save the floors. The salvation of my
hardwoods ranked a bit higher than cleaning up the baby that morning.
Donʼt judge.
Iʼm happy to announce that the local company who installed
our floors and chose a nice polyurethane for us knew what they were doing.
Apparently, they anticipate a life of REAL LIVING on the floors they lay. The
India ink came OFF the floors.
And the angels sang HALLELUJAH.
The ink did not, however, come off of the area rug or the
dinosaur-covered, footed pajamas that we were planning to give back to the
original owner, once we outgrew them. Both of these, along with two of our
better bath towels, went to be with Jesus. Theyʼre resting comfortably in the
landfill.
The moral of this story is that real life happens. No matter
how many photos we pin on Pinterest of pristine and clean houses and
educational activities for toddlers, things are going to explode around us. No
one ever pins those kinds of moments, because we like to create an illusion
that we have it all together on Thursday mornings before school. Itʼs pretty
much exactly what Jesus does for us. He takes the black-as-the-India-ink sin that
weʼve spilled all over ourselves, and He cleans it up. (He probably uses the
luxury bath towels, with His monogram on them, too.) He wipes our sins clean,
and then He tells us, “But this part? Well, it has to go to the landfill, if you
want to continue following Me. We have to get rid of this part completely and
forever. But the stuff thatʼs left, I can clean up quite nicely.”
Iʼm thankful for that. Iʼm thankful that Jesus can clean me
up, and shows me what needs to go. And Iʼm thankful that He entrusted these two
precious boys to me and Jim.
I can say that, because my hardwood floors are still
unblemished. Had they not come clean, the boys might have found themselves on
eBay.
- Tammy Billings, MOPS Mom
Tammy is a wife and mother of 2 children, ages 13 and 1 1/2. She has recently joined MOPS in support of entering the baby and toddler years once again, blessedly, but somewhat unexpectedly. Her presence at our MOPS meetings is a comfort, her love for Jesus a special and hefty gift, and her sense of humor a brilliant light. She keeps us all laughing at the beauty and difficulty of motherhood through her personal blog Jedi Mama: Life at a Jedi House. We are hoping to hear from her often here on the Morning MOPS Blog!
