Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Childhood (09/03/09)
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TITLE: Overrated Cleanliness | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lizzy Ainsworth
09/05/09 -
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Swish, swish, clean the windows, swipe, swipe with an old cloth to dry them and rub, squeak with the polishing wipe. The windows looked great and perfectly cleaned where before they had been marked by the fingers of children.
Children . . . it was so quite in the house. The youngest child was napping in her cot upstairs and the eldest was trailing me with his lego plane asking questions. The two middle girls were out with their mum.
I remembered this morning when the girls had been twirling around, pointing their toes, calling out that they were the world’s best gymnast while they unloaded the dishwasher, how the baby had toddled around tangling herself in tall legs while she waited for breakfast and how the eldest had been sweeping the floor. The mum would quietly call a child to herself, in the midst of noisy morning routine and explain, reprimand or encourage while she stirred the porridge and answered phone calls.
I looked around at my work. The floor which still had a few crumbs not collected by the eight year-old on the broom was now cleanly mopped. All of the blocks which had not quite made it into their basket were now safely away on the right shelf.
I had cleaned up messes made by the years of childhood, until the tidy house was perfect, everything in its place. But it was so quiet, so boring.
Perhaps picture perfect homes were overrated compared to the joyful of mess of children laughing and learning, training to become housekeepers even though their work was incomplete, imperfect. Without them, our lives would be boring and incomplete, our joy imperfect. As I emptied the basin of dirty water onto the lawn, I could barely wait for everyone to return twirling and laughing, through the door, marking the clean panes with grubby fingers and restoring the home to perfect joy.
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