Labor Day

Today is Labor Day in the United States. It is a national holiday to honor the working class citizens. I love it since it is usually the last big swim, for the kids, of the summer. Since my oldest daughter lives close by and she has to work today, definite irony here, we celebrated Labor Day yesterday. It rained and sprinkled but the kids had a great swim, or splash. I was so happy because it has not been a great pool summer. I chopped tomatoes, onions, green peppers, parsley and basil and shaped hamburger patties in my new summer kitchen, with my beautiful daughter. We watched the children swim and splash and only had to moderate a couple of times. When the children weren’t swimming they were only too glad to be given a job to do. They love to help in the kitchen. They also designed their own t-shirts, a craft Chloe my youngest daughter provided for them. I watched as they became completely absorbed in their projects and each of them had a different outcome. So much creativity. If you give a child the tools, it seems they already know what to do. We had a birthday cake for Great-grandpa who turned 78 last week. The house was clean as well, well somewhat clean. One of the doors was closed. The playroom door. I asked the children to please not open that door. I probably don’t need to say anymore about that, but there may be someone reading this story who can’t imagine why. The children couldn’t imagine why the playroom door was closed. It’s not really a playroom and hasn’t been used as such for a long time. It is a spare bedroom/sewing room/ironing room/storage room/toy room. I call it my angel room and I long to reclaim it. I have a horrible habit of gathering piles up around myself. My youngest daughter has the same habit and so does my husband. We all love it when the decks are cleared and it is easy to move about. But somehow it all just comes back. I have some sewing jobs to do but can not get near to the sewing machine. Sometimes I read about minimalists and I look around my little house. How could we have so much stuff? It just keeps coming. So I put it in the room and close the door. I am then able to quickly dust and vacuum and the home is clean and inviting. I am sure that the stuff in that room is important stuff and absolutely necessary to our survival but what I just realized is that I already moved everything into that room and didn’t take it out yet to deal with it before I had to make another contribution to it. This means that none of it was important at all, really. Doesn’t it? Writing this is making me want to stop writing and get in there and box it all up and send it away. I love that room. It is a light azure or bleu de france. It has strong pink and deep yellow and dark wood tones. I hung Elijah’s name on the wall as it was his room when he lived here with his mother before she passed from our world. Angels hang around his name and stand on the sills and shelves. When the room is orderly and clean it is a beautiful room. Why does it have to be either that room or the rest of the house? I am searching for the answer but until then the house is clean and inviting and might I say functional. Perhaps it is a symbol of the disorder of my soul. The conflicts which have plagued my life and still lay hidden deep inside. The disorder which writing has begun to discover and uncover. Who am I? What do I want to be? What do I want to do? The pushing away of oneself in a survival technique not so rare. Someday I will uncover the truth for you but today it is still hidden. Still hidden also for me. Like the mess in the room with the door closed. The order is taking shape where others can see but the mess hidden in the room is still to be dealt with. The soul is becoming free but the chains are still falling. The voice is being heard quietly, timidly for only a few. But courage is taking hold, is beginning like the popping open of a tiny seed, swelling from the moisture, in the dark. Sending it’s tiny tendril up to test the light, to see if it’s good. To see if it will hurt. What it finds is good. What it finds is strengthening. Courage builds courage, and truth brings more truth. Joy grows joy and faith becomes more faith. Discovery leads to more discovery and adventure blossoms. I relaxed in the evening on the couch with the children and we laughed together. My oldest daughter and I laughed. I laughed so hard I cried. These children, all unruly and bouncing around with life and curiosity, this is what Heaven is made of. How surprised will all the proper, dignified people be when they get to heaven and it’s all children just like these and their is no decorum or logic to their theories. They just are. They crawl all over me and their mother. My youngest who is for the most part the only child is surrounded by her niece and nephews and she thinks she is in heaven as well. My grandson who is nine got up in church last week and announced that he will be a pastor. But he doesn’t want to wait until he’s grown up because that is a long time from now. He wants to be a pastor now. The whole congregation praised the Lord for him that Sunday. Now here he is causing me, his grandmother to laugh so hard I am one of the children.  

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,011 words.