Rage Cleaning

     My house is far from spotless and the thought of what it would look like under a black light makes me queasy, especially since I have two boys who are a little too loose and free with their bodily fluids. Yet, I have had friends defensively say to me that their houses are not show places, so don’t judge as if I in contrast my house were sanctimoniously clean. As if I were setting a standard from which to judge other houses as inferior.

     Honestly, I don’t care if my friends or family have cluttered houses. I will wade through piles of paper and knee-high toys for a cup of coffee and a good conversation with a friend anytime. If only they saw the untidy mess in my brain, they would know I am a hot mess of disorderly thoughts, a psychological hoarder. As for my house, the papers and toys and other crap is just shoved under the bed or the back of a cupboard or a drawer because I can’t handle looking at it. And because I am a Rage Cleaner.

     As the piles of dirty laundry and sock trails grow, the dirty dishes pile up and the counters glisten with sticky residue, I attack sponge in hand to fix the only thing I seem to have control over. I scrub till that damn, fricking counter sparkles because it is illegal and frowned upon to sponge my youngest son’s mouth out so he doesn’t whine and snap at everything I even say, even hello to him. I throw the laundry into the washer because I can’t throw out the computer my oldest son plays video games on as he shouts, “This video is almost done,” as I remind him to vacuum the floor for the fifth time.

     And before anyone misjudges me. Like that would happen on social media. Hahaha! My kids do chores. They vacuum and dust and empty the dish washer and trash and pick up etc. But they leave a slug trail of whine behind them, their lower lips protruding, eyes puppy-wide with the look of the down-trodden. And that makes me clean harder as I silently scream my energy into getting the damn ring out of the toilet bowl, my 80’s pop blasting in the background to keep me going.

     Sometimes when the week has been especially hellish with dragging kids to soccer, Cub Scouts, Back to School night, and more I rage organize. Yanking open the cabinets where I’ve shoved away the crap I didn’t want to look at piled on the island, I grab a large plastic trash bag or a large Amazon box for Goodwill and purge all my angst out. I ask if the old blender sitting behind the Vitamix brings me joy and since the 7-year-old behind me is begging for the new drone he saw on a Nick Jr. commercial it goes in the box along with my unheard response to his plea. While the ten paper-wrapped straws from Taco Bell, the six lids that don’t match any of the water bottles my kids haven’t lost, and the mysterious petrified food item from the back of the cabinet gets tossed in the trash bag.

     These rage cleaning episodes help me not commit acts of violence on something that can’t handle the weight of my frustrations. I see it as therapeutic. I make myself anew, clean the bitter-tasting resentment from my soul. When I look upon my kitchen island, no longer cluttered with coffee rings, Legos, reusable shopping bags, and crumpled school notices, I feel happy and accomplished. For a few minutes, I had control over something in my life. I didn’t have to rely on someone else or wait futilely for something else to be done first. I saw a problem, and I fixed it. That gunky kitchen sink was my bitch, submitting to my will and my power.

     So yes, my house has moments of tidiness. But not from an overwhelming desire to clean. I actually despise cleaning. But I hate the buildup of negative energy that seeps under my skin making me into an angry cat, all hissed words and exposed claws. It needs to go somewhere so it might as well be into removing the caked-on residue on the kitchen stove.

My Nighttime Tribe

My Nighttime Tribe

I see my tribe, in their nighttime hive

Finally come alive

As restless head

Succumb to sheets and beds

Eyes rubbed raw from the nightly fight

Half-yawned protests as eyes shutter tight

Mom and dad hang up responsibilities

Flip the switch on their duality

And aim to please

Themselves

Slinking into the coveted spots on the couch

Man and wife, he and she, relax and slouch

Into their own skins

T.V.s turned to stations

Lacking abbreviations

With junior in their communications

Beer tops pop and bubble, bubble,

There is nothing to fix or

Can I trouble

you for another drink,

No need to calculate or think.

I can sink

Into oblivion for an hour or two

These precious hours I accrue

At the end of a mother’s day

When I can shuffle off the role I play

The me I must delay

Until night lights dim and lighten my load

I slip back into me mode

Where I have choice and a voice

To myself

Not shrill or cooed or stuck on repeat

Just me, the one my husband would like to meet

Snugged on the couch or between the sheets

The me I used to be when we were just we

The one I hide in my back pocket till it’s just

Him and me

Or me and he alone with our own notions

Our own books and minds and emotions

Yes, my tribe comes alive in the night

As parents awaken themselves at the sight

Of children’s head tucked in beds snug and tight.

The Ghosted Friendship

     I read all the same memes and inspiration quotes as everyone else about how some people come into our lives for a season, serve a purpose, and then fade out. Their time is done, their dime is spent, the ride is over. And I get it. Some friendships don't last a lifetime. We are not meant to ride off into the sunset with everyone.
     But just because I understand the sentiment and practicalities of it doesn't mean the emotions are not hard. We tangle ourselves into our friendships when we open ourselves up.There is a vulnerability of being real with people.  Some of the heart strings wind and knot together. Significant memories are formed especially during major life moments. These people stand next to you through births, marriages, deaths, and so much more. They may be there in your children's first birthday party photos or a hundred other places filling photo albums and smart phone storage space. They may have been there holding your hand as your found yourself or did something new and noteworthy. So unraveling a history takes time and a few severed arteries. There is blood loss and the pain of regrowth as we scab over and move onto the next someone meant to walk that part of our path with us.
     Yet, sometimes I feel haunted. It's the awkward presence, the cold prickling of the skin when you know you have to see them in a familiar setting be it at a school pick up or birthday parties. Polite manners demand that you at least acknowledge the other person. But an pregnant pause, the dead corpse of what once was stands between you fetid and rotting making stock phrases about the weather even harder to get out. The memories hover unseen, the someone that I used to know, standing in contrast to this familiar stranger. Sometimes the unresolved feelings surface, an emotional heartburn. Anger, pain, resentment, and feelings of unworthiness follow too like pall bearers of the dead relationship.
     It's easy to say its okay. That these things happen. Because they do. Friendships die, sometimes quietly sometimes in a hacked-off, blood drenched Frank Miller kind of way. But just like grieving a real death, we cycle through the feelings of anger, depression, denial, and acceptance. And just like a real death, it doesn't move in a smooth circular pattern but more like the lines of a heart monitor, jagged in peaks and valleys of okay and not okay.

    

 Sometimes we are friends forever

     Sometimes its for a day

 some friends are meant to fade

 and slowly drift away.

But whether its forever

 or merely just a season

 Each friend adds to our lives

each friendship has a reason.

A Mother's Notes from a Tightrope

A Mother’s Notes from a Tightrope

 

One foot across and one foot back, the rope begins to swap.

Trembling, threatening underneath my nerves begin to fray.

If I reach forward and help him out will he ever learn to be?

An independent man able to handle his responsibilities.

Can I stay still and watch him fall and slam into mistakes?

It stabs within my mother’s heart with every fall he takes.

The tightrope pings and sings for me to finally pick a side.

Forwards of backwards, will I be a hindrance or a guide?

From down below I hear my peers, the motherhood brigade.

Shouting cheers or their own fears, my thoughts to dissuade.

I shut them out and watch my boy balancing along with me.

But which do I see, my baby or the man he’ll grow to be?

Do I run and pick him up and remember when he forgets?

To do his homework, clean his room, and fed all the pets.

Or am I too shrill and colder still when I rant and rave?

At all his neglected errors and mistakes, he’s ever made.

So I balance upon the tightrope, with a mother’s careful pace

And hope my own mistakes don’t land us on our face.