Dirty-floor pride

“Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.”
Erma Bombeck

It’s so important to have conversations with parents who are not of your generation.  I was at a function and found myself talking to two people in their sixties, who were both stay-at-home parents in their early twenties.  They had asked what I was up to and I told them about this site.

The woman, I’ll call her Sally, said that when she was a mom it was all about ‘survival.’  There wasn’t a lot of time for reflection, or even just enjoying her kids.  There was always so much to ‘do.’  Some things never change, do they?  I think all moms can agree that there’s always something else ‘to do.’  Juggling work, child-care, relationships with your husband, family, friends, exercise, and housework is a universal challenge for moms.  What Sally seemed to be implying though, is that all of the ‘stuff’ shouldn’t have been as important as being with her kids.

Her words were reassuring.  I’ll be honest with you, I have a dirty house pretty much all of the time.  Things are usually tidy, but with two kids, three pets, and a sandbox in the backyard, our floors can get pretty scary.   When it comes right down to it, I would much prefer to make a craft with Pip than sweep and mop the floors every day, so that’s what I do.  And that’s what Pip is going to remember about being a kid.  Not that her mom had a clean house, but that her mom painted rocks with her.

The gentleman I was talking to at the party, whom I’ll call Tom, said that there weren’t as many resources for parents in his day; there weren’t any books that he had read, and people didn’t really converse about parenting as we do now.  He said that love and patience was the basis for his parenting though, and that held him in pretty good stead.   “I mean,” said Tom, “all of my kids are grown and they still like to hang out with me, so I think that’s a pretty good sign.”  I agree, Tom.  It’s a great sign.