Someday

Someday there will not be toothpaste on the bathroom mirror, or food coloring splattered around the bathtub. I will not step on plastic Disney rings or spend time brushing the knots out of Barbies' hair. Someday I will be able to listen to something besides the soundtrack to "Annie" in the car, and the backseat will not be filled with enough crumbs to feed a homeless person. There will be rooms in this house that will be left undisturbed for days at a time, and there will not be entire drawers devoted to construction paper, markers, stickers, and glue.

Someday I will not be packing lunches or awakened by hungry people who can't yet lift the milk jug. The back yard will not be littered with plastic food and utensils, and there will be no more naked dolls lying uncomfortably on the basement floor. My front porch will not house scooters, strollers, or sidewalk chalk. Someday there will not be loud wails of "MaMAHHH!!" reverberating through the house, and I will not have that hot, overwhelming feeling of being needed far beyond my ability to meet needs.

All of this makes me kind of sad.. As tiring and crazy as life can be right now, I love it. I love these girls. With each new age they open whole new doors on life (and sometimes wacky things come walking over the threshold), and those little people take me on a very rich and adventurous ride. It makes me sad to think of it being over someday.

But there's definitely hope in spite of the sad feelings I have imagining our quiet, clean, empty house. The hope comes from our parents, who don't seem sad at all that we aren't living at their houses writing on their walls or using their ace bandages as harnesses to drag one another around. Both Alan's parents and mine seem to have weathered their empty nests by flying out of them--on trips to the British Isles, Canada, New Zealand, etc. They seem just fine with the facts that they don't have to do our laundry or wipe our toothpaste out of the sink, or that no one is picking the heads off their daffodils as soon as they pop out of the ground. They don't seem to miss vacuuming so much crud off the dining room rug that the vacuum cleaner sounds like a maraca, or that no one is walking into the bathroom while they're sitting on the toilet and saying with astonishment, "Mommy, you have a really big, giant butt!"

Thank you to both sets of our parents, for reminding me in your own ways to soak up every moment of these days, and for giving me hope that the days to come will have their own rich adventure and satisfaction, even if there's no one putting rocks in my purse.