On Judgement.

I figure this story is as good a place to start as any.

Once, a long time ago (or maybe 3 and a half years ago), I was a mother of one and a half. One self possessed little boy who wasn't very messy or very much work. (At the time, of course, I thought he was SO HARD. All parents of one child do.) I was also pregnant with my second. A wonderful, beautiful mama friend allowed me into her world and into her home, one populated by 3 crazy boy children, two very close in age. Her youngest at the time is about the same age as my youngest now.

Let's pause here. How many kids do you have? If it's any less than 3, you probably won't get this story. If you have two close in age, you might. You hear stories about what having 3 kids is like. The advice is usually something like, be a willow tree, be the calm at the center of the storm, if everyone ate and nobody died it was a good day. You can understand these things theoretically, but you don't realize until you get there that having 3 children is utter insanity. You're outnumbered on a good day. On a bad one? When you're sick, and there's other sick people, or the baby wants to nurse and your toddler is on a destructive spree and your tweenager is full of angst, you then know at a gut level what that last bit of advice is good for.

Back to our story. So, I go to this lady's house. It's chaos. There's kids everywhere, and food. Oh god, the food. It is EVERYWHERE. Mashed onto the table, into the carpet, it's all over baby's mouth, in toddler's hair, in the TV room, the living room, the dining room, everywhere. I think I'm sitting in some. At this point, I was blissfully unaware of what the story was. I thought to myself, man, I know she has 3 kids, but there will never be food all over my house like this. This is crazy. We only eat in the dining room. How did that food even get there? How many different kinds of food are there crushed up here?

I was passing judgement. I didn't think less of her, but I definitely had my own take on her circumstances.

Today, I know better. With a ten year old, a three year old, and an 8 month old, we measure food in the house in blast radii. Oh, someone gave baby Chex in her exersaucer. The blast radius of crumbs looks to be about 2 feet. I'm putting my math skills to work here....If I sit her down on the floor on a playmat 8 feet from her original blast radius, how much time do I have in minutes until she has rolled, scooted, or army crawled into that zone and is eating crusty gooey crumbs covered in cat hair and dirt off the floor? If I give my preschooler some yogurt, how many minutes do I have before it becomes an art project, and what kind of force will she need to hit it with for the trajectory to include the living room carpet, about 5 feet away?

Parenting is a thinking woman's job.

Back to judgement.

Knowing I had company coming over this morning lit a fire under my ass. Knowing of the two people, one is pretty judgmental of cleanliness, and the other person I have never even met before, I am feeling the heavy weight of imagined judgement. There is food and clothing and mess and garbage everywhere. I am running around like a woman possessed, sweeping and cleaning and scrubbing things. I can't find the microfiber mop head so I'm down on hands and knees with a disinfectant wipe. I am cursing my husband who cannot seem to make it out of the doorway to our house without spilling coffee all over the floor. I am cursing my son who has dripped jam down the cabinets god knows when and never cleaned it up. I am wiping sweet potatoes from the wall and trying to calculate when we last ate sweet potatoes, and you know what? I can't remember. I feel the pain and panic associated with *just* being judged as a housewife and mom and obviously I'm not doing much else. (Well, I am, actually, a lot more, and those jobs are seriously ridiculously underrated).

All of this is to say, The Universe rewarded me for my hubris those three odd years ago.

And it's really interesting how much more people consider you as having your shit together when your house appears clean.