Ridiculosity

I remember those early days when Magoo was a newborn.  TJ would come home from work, and he would tell me all about his day.  At the time, he would travel locally pretty much all day, every day, so I would get to hear about all the places he was going and all the people he was talking to.  He was usually exhausted when he got home.

Then he would ask me what I did.  And you could hear the crickets chirping.

Now at the end of a long day, I can usually say that I didn’t really even sit down for thirty seconds, but when you have a newborn who naps well, you have some free time on your hands.  And I had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

I used to hate the expression, “you have too much time on your hands.”  Usually it’s used when someone thinks you are partaking in some kind of ridiculosity like color coordinating your five hundred books on the book shelf or going into deep research on how to improve your Scrabble game.  It’s usually meant to imply that since you have extra time, you are engaging in odd activities that are better left undone.

And that’s kind of what I felt like I was doing.

It always felt to me like TJ was doing the real work.  He was going out into the world and making money to support our family.  He was advancing professionally, and he was pursuing his doctorate degree.  He was spending his time on important matters.

Me… not so much.

Obviously I felt like taking care of Magoo was important, but in terms of all the other stuff — the building of the nest — I felt it was a bit frivolous.  No one was going to get sick if our sock drawers aren’t organized.  Magoo wouldn’t be traumatized if sometimes her blocks got mixed up with her shape sorters.  We weren’t going to starve if I just didn’t do all those extra things.

I guess I felt like TJ was providing the home, and everything that went on within it was less important than that.

And now…

Well now I totally disagree.  I still believe that TJ works tremendously hard to provide for our family, but I also finally believe that all of those little things that I do matter just as much.

Four walls are important.  Healthy food is vital.  Medical care is a necessity.  All of those things are crucial, and our family just simply wouldn’t run without TJ.

But organized toys help the kids play better.  Pretty walls help us feel at peace.  Photographs remind us of us at our best.

I no longer believe in the idea of people having too much time on their hands.  I think that mindset just stems from our culture that values activities that provide economic gain while disvaluing those that add to our wellbeing in other ways.  It stems from a culture that values making a living rather than making a life, that values accumulating rather than being.

And so I have taken to doing things that make our house really feel like a comforting nest for all of us.

I make very certain that there isn’t any clutter anywhere.  I put the kids’ toys away every night so that they wake up to a clean slate.  I hand knit our dishcloths and washcloths because it just makes the house look prettier.  I try to make all of our meals from scratch because I think the time put into it somehow helps nurture the togetherness of the meal just a bit more.  I try to create most of the artwork in our home either by myself or with the girls because I want it to be a reflection of who we are rather than just what we spend.

And I started making these…

That glorious hand knitted piece of ridiculousness is an egg cosy.  You put it on top of hard or soft boiled eggs to make them look cute.  I told TJ what I was knitting, and he just looked at me strangely.  Then he saw it finished and I think he thought I had finally lost it.  But it wasn’t until I made him drive around with me for a couple of hours today in search of the egg cups that he was finally ready to have me committed.

But you know what?  I am really proud of my little egg hats.  Obviously my children’s lives would be quite full even if their Easter eggs had to face the cold world without the benefit of a winter hat, but I like to think that one day they will look back on their childhood, and they will remember this.  I like to think that it will be a quirky story they will tell about their early years, and perhaps they will even carry the tradition on with their own families.

It’s silly.  It’s rather pointless.  Perhaps one might say it’s indicative of me having too much time on my hands.  But to me, it’s just part of making a nest.  And in any nest, there needs to be room for a little bit of ridiculousness.  Otherwise, we run the danger of taking ourselves too seriously.

What about you?  What do you do to feather your nest?  What acts of ridiculosity do you partake in to create memories?