Bee-Beep!

It really should come as no surprise that I’m writhing in pain on the floor, in the dark while everyone else sleeps peacefully around me.  I’m sure I looked a little like Wile E. Coyote caught, once again, the gullible fool by the crafty Road Runner… Bee-Beep. 

No matter how many times I ask that this not be the case, these huge sports shoes that weigh as much as a frozen chicken and cost more than both my prom dresses put together, are constantly in the middle of the floor where I am trying to do almost anything other than trip over them.  And now, as I sit cradling my foot after walking full steam down the hall in the dark and, of course, ramming right into the roadrunner’s cleverly placed anvil, I swear, again, I will make these children listen next time.

If it’s not one son’s shoes in the middle of the floor, it’s the other son’s four water glasses beside his bed, each filled with the water he thought he needed the night before, and the night before that, and the night before that.  “Please!” I repeat again and again, “Every time I come into your room I should not need to leave with an armload of dishes!”  It really does seem to be a reasonable request.  But there are others too.  There are the inside out socks in the laundry followed by the inside out pants, complete with the inside out boxers still attached…a talent really when you think about it, but annoying none the less. There’s the popular notion that we apparently live in a place where it’s acceptable to leave plates, food, wrappers, Gatorade bottles or all of the above, strewn about wherever we were last enjoying what was once inside.  Again, I lecture, I plead, I reason, I lay down the law; I make them return and retrieve the litter.  But, alas, nothing has worked so far to remedy the problem.

I know that I really should have consequences for these broken rules.  But in the grand scheme of our lives, the shoes on the floor, the socks in the laundry and the extra dish to wash all seem so small compared to life’s real problems.  Plus, there is the nagging irony in all my talking.  Ironic since I’m the only one who seems to be doing it.  

It wasn’t all that long ago that my children produced a virtual fire hose of conversation, we could barely keep up or get a word in.  Now, their words drip out from a leaky faucet.  Led by the oldest child, who can manage an entire conversation in which his answers consist of one-syllable responses, some of which aren’t even actual words, just sounds.

And just as I’ve started to resign myself to the fact that the long conversations are gone, I get an unexpected one here and there just to throw me off.  The catch is, the timing won’t be mine to decide.

For instance, at the end of another busy day when I am about to drag my self off to fall into bed, at my weakest moment, my teenager perks up, suddenly full of information, and happy to share.  Or during church, when all is quiet, he is suddenly ready to whisper to me an entire week’s worth of information that mysteriously comes pouring out, with colorful detail, wit and humor and full-blown genuine candor.  Yet, when I have waited all day to ask, “How was your day?” I receive the monosyllabic “fine” and “good”.

What I’ve come to realize is this.  It is not mine to determine when these golden moments will arise, but how I react is.  So, no matter how tired, or busy, or interrupted I feel, I am trying to clamp my lips shut tight and open my ears.  Because sometimes life’s most important lessons don’t come from a lecture they come from complete silence. And life’s most important battles are usually not the little ones at all.  A good reminder on a night when my smallest toe is barking the loudest.