Another Tuesday Morning

It is utter chaos.

I had to stop in between each of the first four words of this post.

It… “No! Stop! Put the cup down!”

Is… “Don’t stand on the chair, sit… sit down… yes, on your bottom. Thank you.”

Utter… “Oh my gosh, please stop pushing her chair! RELAX!”

Chaos…. “Where are you going? Yeah, let’s not just get up and walk out the front door, sweetie.”

I have to laugh. He’s wearing his pajama shirt backwards with matching shorts and a superman robe. Getting up from his bowl of what has to be terribly cold oatmeal by now, he very purposefully puts on his socks and shoes and proceeds to open the front door.

Up to this point I have been satisfied with spectating but I suppose I should caution the four year old boy that walking right out the front door by himself would be wildly inappropriate at 8am in the morning. Or any time really, but whatever.

“Hey, where you going?” I feel the need to use improper grammar with children, like they understand it better.

He simply looks back at me and points outside.

“Yeah, let’s not just get up and walk out the front door, sweetie.”

He shuts the front door and mumbles, “I’m gonna go get my mom.”

Probably a good call, kid. This babysitter might need some help.

It is really just another weekday morning. The coffee began brewing at some point in the dark hours, the kids are roused and prodded to get dressed, hurry, eat, hurry, brush your teeth, hurry, and off to school they go. The little ones beg for breakfast, then leave it to mush on the table, apparently never as hungry as they think they are. Babies begin to cry, cups spill, trash cans go unemptied, clothes strewn across the floor, while morning talk shows play to a missing living room audience.

And thus the day begins.

It is the quintessential portrait of life, is it not? We rush about, hustling to get up, get out and get on with it. In the meantime, we leave behind a mess that eventually we come back to, clean up, then mess up again. It’s an endless cycle that breeds frustration and tiredness. At some point we stop, look around and question why, why continue with any of this? Is it worth it?

It is in those moments of broken inquiry when I realize that this mess, is life. And in all of its chaotic form I begin to see beauty. I begin to see that as hurried as I can get and as messy as my life can be, there is something bigger than me, something larger than my feeble disasters. There is a reason I continue to answer “yes” to the question of “is it worth it?” There is a reason why I always come back to the mess, clean up and move forward.  

I suppose that in the eye of these storms there is the hope that my presence here will have made a difference. A hope that the kids whose lives I’m a part of will grow into adults who carry a little extra love in their hearts that they got from me. A hope that my co-workers will move on in their careers and one day reminisce about the good old days we had of working together. A hope that my friends will become family, and that my family will become my friends. A hope that my end game is one of love, positivity, encouragement and acceptance.

To begin with the end in mind, I’ve been told, is how to go about leaving a legacy. I understand now that it is the only way to not give up in the middle, at the height of the conflict, when the struggles seem the heaviest. I try to make it a point these days to take my gaze just out beyond today and think about what this moment might look like in another lifetime from now. It becomes so much easier to smile and let go of the little things I clench so tightly in my grasp. It becomes easier to love and support the ones around me, to just be present.

It becomes easier to appreciate the mess.