My hands smell of rotted Pediasure. It has a mint-y tinge, not like the thrown-up smell of milk or fruit or cereal. But something more artificial; a man-made stink. I’ve scrubbed them repeatedly to get rid of the smell from my youngest’s recent bout of flu, but it lingers.
The words of Lady Macbeth when she said, “What, will these hands ne’re be clean?” have never felt so pertinent. Yet murder is not my crime, instead, motherhood. The kind of motherhood that willingly sacrifices a corduroy jacket to save the floor of WalMart, cleans regurgitated Macaroni and Cheese and Chef Boyardee without even flinching, the kind that aches for her boy’s tiny body to make it through the night without having to feel his stomach tighten, his body release the fluids so painstakingly deposited the night before.
Today is my wedding anniversary, the 8th. The wedding that led to the children, that led to the throw-up. The throw-up that reminds me of times before I worried about throw-up. Times when all I had to worry about was the “perfect” wedding.
And the “perfect” wedding led to an imperfect marriage which led to wrinkles (even from laughter) and bags and worry and grit. And those things have led me to a strange kind of peace. A peace that I can sometimes feel with my hands that smell of stink.
So, here’s to feisty marriages. And sick children. And becoming…
My anniversary was yesterday, and I spent some time thinking about this very thing. How on earth did this all happen? And when? One day, I was sitting there in my size 8 wedding dress, smiling and giggling private giggles with my lover, the next thing I remember is dinner last night.
Everything in between is just a blur.
A smell like that on your hands can mean only one thing. You are living life. Like the smell of onions on your hands, when you cook a great dinner. Or the smell of baby lotion on them after you bathe your newborn. Or peanut butter after fixing lunch for your 5 year old.
Amazing how the vomit smell can linger. Once one of my toddlers threw up in his hair and no matter how many times I washed it, his cute little head smelled sour for a week.
Sometimes I love the grittiness of life. It’s means I’ve been somewhere and I’m going somewhere and I’m…becoming.
There’s a quote I love–now dang, who said it? Neal Maxwell?–about Abraham’s sacrifice. Goes something like this: God didn’t demand the sacrifice because he needed to learn something about Abraham. He demanded it because Abraham needed to learn something about Abraham.
You’re learning what you’re made of.
It gets better. For my parent’s 13th wedding anniversary, they took a trip, and brought us kids along. In the middle of a beautiful nature walk I became violently ill and ended up in the hospital for emergency surgery.
This is not a comment about anniversaries, it’s about moppng things up from the floor of a grocery store. I went to Costco a few months ago. My cart was soon piled high with loot. I had no room for the mega-giant 2 gallon container of Pine-Sol, so I slid it onto the bottom of the cart. It must not have been secure, because when I braked hard to check out some fruit leather, it rolled off, dropped at leat 2 inches, and shattered. Pine-Sol everywhere. I ran to find a store person and explained what happened. I felt so bad–but the person said not to worry, the floors were dirty anyway, and he would clean it up. I felt worried, because you’re supposed to dilute that stuff one quarter cup of Pine-Sol to 1 gallon of water. So that’s . . . . too complicated for me to figure out. Well, if there are 16 cups to a gallon, then that’s 32 cups of pine sol, then that’s 128 gallons of water needed to dilute the pine-sol to the right consistency. ANYWAY, I left that poor fellow there mopping, and went to get another jug of Pine Sol so I could go home and do my own floors. I was seduced by the size of the bottle, the relative inexpensiveness, and the feeling of righteousness I get whenever I put something like that in my 10 years supply closet. So I picked up 2 of them. I put them gently in the baby seats of the cart. I meant to go straight to the checkout, but my eye was caught by gigantic packages of paper napkins. As I went over to take a look, someone ran into my cart. BOTH jugs of Pine-Sol tumbled from the top of the cart and shattered. I looked at the woman who had hit my cart. She looked at me. Then I fled. I didn’t go back to Costco for several weeks.
Heidi–ha! When you have the math figured out, I want to know how many gallons it would take to clean that up. I would have run too…
Heidi that is seriously the funniest thing I’ve read in weeks!
Did you ever end up buying the big Pine Sol jug?
I did–I asked my husband to go in there and buy it for me. I ony got one. Then we moved, and there is no costco near . . . but that’s OK. I have enough to last for about 10 more months. Love it!