A Tribute to Dirt in Unexpected Places

We are not an especially tidy family. It's difficult maintaining a spotless home when small children  and even smaller pets move about at will. Our mantises and frogs and perpetually pregnant guppy and rabbits and guinea pig and budgies all work together to give our home a cheery albeit somewhat disorganized feel.

I am baffled by those women who, in the midst of birthing infants and rearing toddlers and managing the complex lives of grade schoolers, have pristine floors and sorted toy bins in cheery colours. My hairdresser, God bless her, washes her floors on a daily basis, so fearful is she of a speck of dirt. I can't imagine running such a tight ship. And I'm sure she'd find my decision to allow my daughter to bring a dozen isopods into the house at a time for the purpose of feeding a frog incomprehensible. (Personally, I find those dear little wood lice a pleasant addition to the family and gently pick them up whenever I discover an escapee.)

Indeed, I feel much more secure around mothers whose sippy cups runneth over and whose laundry is frozen in various stages of sorting. I feel especially good around those women who simply dump all of their unsorted clothing into baskets from which their children must draw their daily outfits. I love the mother of three who admitted that, whenever she cleans, she must put up with her daughter's puzzled questions. "Who's coming over, Mommy?" her daughter will inevitably say. "You're tidying up."

I recently discovered that my eldest daughter was conducting yet another set of science experiments (unbeknownst to me). In the past D. has made balls from toilet paper she has painstakingly coloured with markers and then soaked. She has made concoctions from berries and leaves and dirt and flour stolen from the kitchen, sweetening the mess by adding sticky hard candy, the remnants of Halloween. Like any good absent-minded inventor, she moves on to the next question, the next project, leaving me with a puzzling collection of bacteria to discover under the bed. Her latest idea was to clean rainwater by using a pot of dirt (of all things) as a filter, followed by rocks, and then paper. D. conducted her experiment in the bathroom, and I'll admit I nearly lost my temper upon encountering a random and seemingly pointless mess.

Fortunately, she was able to explain this project to me, and to beg me to take her to a thrift store so that she could purchase her very own funnel. Her bright enthusiasm warmed my heart. I thought back to my own childhood. My mother, for brief window of time, attempted to put the household in order--to raise children who would put things in their places. Fortunately for me, she quickly realized that she was raising a family of inventors, and dabblers, and hobbyists, and avid animal collectors, and messy painters of enormous canvases, and she decided that living was more important than cleaning. And so we children discovered our worlds, and ourselves, within a happy and disorderly environment.

So, while I strive to keep the frog in its enclosure, and the piles of dirt in the outside world, I savour these moments with children who invent, and discover, and misplace, and forget, and grow bigger all the while.