Landscape

I think that sometimes our children inhabit a different world. I remember being there myself a very long time ago. They have none of the clutter of adult life to contend with but create a very unique clutter all of their own. We share most of our time, spending it together, playing, reading, going places. They love to help even with the chores, following me around with a duster and shoving the vacuum cleaner around. But there are times when I just have to get on with stuff. You know, washing, reading all the junk that comes through the letterbox and sorting it into various recycling receptacles, cleaning that I don’t let them do, the mucky stuff.

During these times my children play together. I sometimes have to intervene, but on the whole they play beautifully. I hear them giggling, chatting, making up stories, going on aeroplanes, making dens, having picnics. My older daughter “reads” to her little sister. And they collect stuff and distribute it around our home. By stuff I mean feathers, flowers, little piles of grass, glass beads that for some reason appear in our garden, empty snail shells. Mostly it’s stuff they have found outside and sometimes it isn’t as clean as the stuff you would choose to live with.

I do remember being in that place. Finding those things fascinating and wanting to collect them. My sister and I made boxes of similar bits as holiday souvenirs. I have to remind myself, however, of the importance those little things have now I’m older and no longer live in that world.

Today I made a parenting mistake. I didn’t take the time to stop and think. I was tidying the house and cleaning. Not something I do with any routine or system. I just found myself with an hour when the girls were busying themselves. I whipped through the bathroom with a rubbish bag and without thinking threw away a rather scruffy feather which had been sitting on the windowsill for a few days.

At bedtime our story book mentioned feathers and the girls jumped up and said “we’ve got a feather, we’ll go and find it and show it to you”. Ah. As they dashed off to the bathroom I asked Simon “how do they remember all that stuff? They haven’t touched that feather for days”. And he said, rather profoundly “It’s part of the landscape that makes up their world”.

So much as having a tidy house is really important to me, I promise to be extra careful from now on with the little things the girls bring home. Minimalism is great, but it has to accommodate the world inhabited by two small children. After all, it’s their house too.