Tag: big family

Big Brood

I figured that we could all use some holiday cheer:

My daughter asked me how to begin her letter to Santa Claus so I suggested she start with, “Hear me out …” (@Dad_At_Law Twitter)

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credit: Rex Masters, Twitter

Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish readers!!!

****I know that a lot of you are worried about me and my family, but we are doing okay. A good night’s sleep does wonders. One Day at a Time. It’s the only way to live. You savor and experience your life more that way. Don’t worry. Be happy.****

When you raise a big family (we have four kids), you do a lot of dishes and laundry and driving and PTA forms. You do a lot of juggling of schedules and cars in the driveway. There is a steady hum of noise in the house, always. You are constantly cleaning up messes.

When your big family grows up and moves out, you honestly sometimes forget what raising the big family was like. And then they come home for the holidays, and you are swiftly reminded. As you are doing yet another load of laundry and the dishwasher is running yet again and your husband is vacuuming for the third time in one day, and you have to yell out over all of the noise for someone to move their car so that another car can get out of the garage, and you are trying to remember where everyone is and where everyone is supposed to be, you take a pause and you smile to yourself. You are reminded that you made it through 12 years of high schoolers, relatively unscathed. You are reminded that you helped to give a good, solid start to four wonderful people who are already making a difference in this world. You pat yourself on the back with sheepish pride. And although you realize that you certainly don’t have the energy to do it all again, you are incredibly happy that at one time in your life, you did have the energy to raise a big family. You realize that your big family helped to make your heart grow big, and a big heart is full of love and love is the stuff that sustains you, and that thought is what carries you through the final folding of towels and sheets, from the recent reunion of your big, beautiful brood.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Dirty Laundry

I have proven to myself once again that I am a strong woman. I am capable of rising above my strong sense of smell and my acute gag reflex. My three man-children are home this weekend and all three of them took me up on my offer to do their laundry. My eldest son paid to fly in a extra large bagful for the occasion. The smells, a pungent mix of sweat, dirty shoes and mildew and God know what else, layered together in piles of clothes and towels that probably hadn’t see the light of a clothes washer in quite some time, were nothing short of overwhelming. The dubious, edgy t-shirts gotten along the way, I decided not to ponder about too much. I asked them to empty pockets beforehand so that I had no mysteries to unravel and stress about, long after they head back to work and college. Luckily, they complied.

It’s funny how your perspective changes on doing chores, like laundry, for your children, once they are out of the home. I actually, in some weird way, kind of enjoyed the experience (clothespin on my nose and all). And my sons’ warm appreciation for it was certainly at levels I wasn’t used to experiencing when they were all living at home. Old fashioned family days, with all six of us together, just doing our thing, swimming, eating and drinking, playing with the dogs, eating and drinking, playing games, playing pool, eating and drinking, teasing each other playfully, watching movies, eating and drinking, falling asleep on the couch, are just so far and few between now. Those types of days that felt like they would go on forever and ever, are now such a novelty and a gift. I was filled with so much love, and pride and gratitude for this family, that my husband and I created yesterday. Maybe that is the blessing of our children growing up and creating their own adult lives. We all just seem all the more acutely aware of the mutual appreciation that we have for each other now, and for the blessing of our many happy family times and memories. The grumbling about the chores and the expense and the worries and the exhaustion, that abound when raising a large family, gives way to allow gratitude and gratefulness and mostly a quiet thankful awe of it all, to rise to the top and to see everything, even smelly loads of laundry, in a beautiful, new light.

All of the dirty laundry is clean and refreshed now. The adventures my sons are experiencing in their new lives, sometimes far away from us, will be encapsulated in the new rounds of foul-smelling laundry that they will inevitably bring home next visit. And I will welcome it all, with open arms, gladly and giddily.