Saturday

The house is rather in shambles. Saturdays themselves – in their desperation to be everything – always lean it that way to begin with. And then, . . . after a week plus of illness, I’ve stripped sheets and quilts off beds and gathered beloved blankies (despite protests) and added them to the piles of laundry I’m intending to have finished for the week. Simultaneously Mike has instructed the kids to pull brooms and baskets and rain boots and miscellany from the laundry room so he can replace one dryer (a broken one) with another (hopefully not broken). And all about the house . . . mess is getting worse before it can get better.

And, just when I thought I’d arranged everything so that I might sneak the smallest run into the madness of this day (on my mostly broken feet and ankles), we remembered an event that three of our kids were supposed to be at – dressed in their best – in just minutes. And the longed-for run fell to the way side.

 
BUT! Goldie gathered all the little kids around the kitchen counter earlier – giving them fresh balls of dough and instructing them in various options for shaping pretzels. And when I sat at the computer to type for a minute, and Goldie asked what I was up to and I replied, “Oh, I was just writing for a minute, but I probably need to get back to cleaning,” she  responded that she would see to the cleaning. I can hear Mette below -- alternating singing a few jumbled and repeated words of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing with asking Mike to come help her open the sliding glass door. Hans is walking around – shirtless – and, with eager words of gibberish, bringing me small things to examine – some rubber bands, a tin cup, a plastic light saber and a Fisher Price camera. Pen, Jesse and Anders keep complaining about being shewed outside and then resigning themselves to making it fun. And Summer is, with great thought and care, laying out a little bed of towels, blankets and stuffed animals on the living-room love seat.

Later, most likely, I will feel overwhelmed. It will be late. No one will have been fed dinner. Hans will be crying to be held. Mette will be insisting she needs something and only I can help her. Several kids will spill things. I’ll have to repeat my requests (“brush your teeth”, “get your jammies on”, etc.) multiple times in rising crescendo for them to be followed. I might lose my temper a bit when unwilling toddlers refuse to go to bed.

But, right now? Right now . . . this backdrop of undone and stress and clutter. It’s all perfectly fine.