Squeaky Clean

Today Jeffrey and I had the afternoon off from school so we decided to do a little shopping. We didn't really find much that struck our fancy, so we came home empty-handed, but happy to have spent some time together.

The happiness only lasted a few minutes, though, because we both realized upon walking through the door to our apartment that it was a disaster! In our haste to study for tests, finish projects, and go to sleep at night, we had let our apartment turn into a dumping ground for clothes (both clean and dirty) and various papers from school. The kitchen was splattered with tiny pieces of each quickly-made meal we ate last week, and we're not even going to talk about the bathroom situation!

Needless to say, the later part of our afternoon was spent cleaning up the place. Once everything was neatly in its place, we sat down to rest for a minute on the couch. Looking around at our clean apartment I was shocked at how different it looked. The counter tops looked bigger because they were free from clutter. The pattern of the wood on the coffee table was so pretty--and I noticed it because I could see it (it had been under a pile of papers for the last 3 weeks). And apparently, underneath all my clothes, a full-sized dresser has been hiding for months in our bedroom!

All these thoughts made me think of a story from childhood...

My brother has always been funny. He's the comedian in our family now, and he was the funniest kid when he was little. A lot of the laughs that we had with Greg when he was little was because he couldn't say any of his words correctly. He said "puh-sketti" instead of "spaghetti," "cod-a-rah-lo" instead of "Colorado," and "innawashpeepan" instead of "I want to watch Peter Pan."

He also had a sweet, sweet heart and was always saying whatever he thought could encourage someone else. One day, my mom decided to clean up the laundry room at our house. It (like our apartment) had become the victim of the hectic lifestyle of a working mother of 3 children. Mom spent all afternoon cleaning it to perfection, so when we came home from school she proudly showed off her work to us.

Sweet little Greg, with admiration in his big blue eyes, looked up at Mom and exclaimed, "Mom! You put in a sink!"

Mom had not, in fact, put in a sink. She had just cleaned the clutter off of the sink. Then she sunk into a deep depression while wondering if the sink had really been covered with clutter for all 6 years of Greg's life, or if Greg simply hadn't noticed it before. She came out of it when she realized that once Greg believed she could put in a sink, he believed that she could do anything and was on the same coolness level as Peter Pan.