The kids 1 hour lunch break from cyber school is in full swing.  I am slapping together some PB&J’s while the kids cut loose in the back yard.  Unfortunately, our yard has slowly…as we’ve overpopulated it, become a “standing room only” kinda inner city yard over the past eight years.  Fortunately though, we have the biggest, most sprawling (only) silver maple tree in the neighborhood and it has served as the home to the most fanciful dreams come true.  Picture “Neverland”, but within a 25x50ish foot chain link fenced area…and no grass.  Just dusty earth and tree roots.  Minimal parental interruption.  Not a lot of rules.  Access to tools.  Pocket knives.  A fire ring.  Some tires.  Chris had just that weekend hung three new swings from the glorious branches of the mother tree.  As lunch time came upon us, every swing was occupied.  I enter the yard, stepping over a piece of firewood with a plank across it that was clearly used as a seesaw and then abandoned.  All swings have slowed to an appropriate PBJ interception speed.  While passing out sandwiches my eye catches site, thru some yard debris, of a fresh golden delicious apple.  On the ground.  With one bite missing from it.  I immediately begin to channel my late father…and every other parent who has ever incurred the grocery bill that a family of six can produce.  “Is this serious?  Come on guys.  Whose apple is this?  Whose perfectly good apple is this laying on the ground with one bite taken out of it and a nice amount of dirt and sawdust on it?”  Micah looks guilty.  “You know Micah, you’ll be the guy tomorrow who’s askin around about an apple and I will have to say No.  The last apple was wasted in the yard yesterday…” Were my peripheral prepped for what was about to come…maybe I would have taken a step forward, but once a mother is ranting about a interhousehold moral dilemma…its hard to get her tunnel vision to focus anywhere but the issue at hand.  Apparently, the moment Micah speechlessly fessed up, the other three children deactivated their listening ears and resumed yard life.  Iris had loaded herself onto the swing to my far right.  Naturally, two large pieces of firewood served as a heightened launch pad, to achieve more air.  As I spouted at Micah about economics and the “children in the world who don’t get to pick a piece of fresh fruit from a bowl on their kitchen counter…” I never even saw her coming.  SLAMMED!  from the back, right side with the full weight of my eight year old daughter, swinging carelessly thru the air.  The impact knocked the words right out of my mouth as I stumbled forward in shock.  We make eye contact.  Her face says, “Oh my dear God, she was really not happy and then I swung right into her and now she seems even less happy.” All I could say while looking deep into her wide, stunned eyeballs was…”Really?”  A full 3 seconds of complete and utter yard silence follows.  And then the uncontrolled laughter of a crazy woman.  I couldn’t help it.  I began to laugh so hard I had to sit down on a nearby log to stop from falling over and the tears streamed down my face.  The complete loss of the words that were coming out of my face, the blow that silenced the possessed protector of abused fruit…it was all too much I suppose.  I hadn’t laughed that hard in ages.  Once the kids realized I was not injured but was rather experiencing the kind of insane and boisterous release that a pent up stay at home mother needs to have occasionally, they all eased into a hearty laugh themselves.  Sometimes I think that life has a way of building up to a point of eruption.  Maybe that eruption leads to years of therapy or a date night with your husband or something else you deeply need.  But maybe its just gonna look like you sitting on a log in your yard crying a good happy, fed up cry while four children swing and play and throw balls past your head.    That laugh was more beneficial than my children listening contently thru any number of my righteous rants.  I hope they eventually figure out that taking a bite of an apple and throwing it down is among their worst ideas ever, but until then, I need to keep laughing.

While I was loading the dishwasher this morning, the kids were enjoying their “ease into the day” episode of Curious George.  Flynn was thumbing through the latest issue of Kids National Geographic.  He stands up from the couch and approaches me in the kitchen with a sense of urgency.  “Mom, you need to see this.”  He hands me the magazine.  I see clearly the full color photo of the concern at hand.  Bright orange and white stripes.  Shining scales.  And two heads.  Two Headed Milk Snake.  I read the paragraph.  Found in Florida.  The article states that it hatched there and the next sentence is  “Why?”  Seriously.  Like one snake with one head isnt bad enough…lets one up it.  But not a whole snake.  Lets just one up this creepy thing a single head.  The worst part of any snake.  The rest of it is just like a slippery rope, and sometimes its like a really pretty slippery rope (tolerable-ish).  But the head is where the bum out is.  Teeth, venom…weird eyes. “WHY?!”  I guess the odds are 10,000 to 1 of a two headed snake hatching.  When discovered, he was placed in captivity because the one body has two brains, making survival difficult for the poor little guy. (why we are protecting this thing I’m sure I dont understand…) Each head trying to flee in separate directions from predators.  Each head having its own bright ideas about where to find food.  I imagined there could perhaps not be a more hellish existence.  Or a more terrifying animal.  Not only is it creepy and two headed, but those two heads are essentially always at odds.  Always just a little pissed off to begin with.  Anyway, I sensed the seriousness Flynn was trying to convey.  I just said “Wow.  Thats really creepy.”  His eyes are slightly widened, “Yeh.  Very.”  He pulls the magazine back toward himself and begins to walk away.  My thoughts are still very much on the photo I just saw.  I say in his direction, “Could you imagine running into that thing outside?”  He spins around, holding his arms out in a posture of distress as he exclaims, “Yeh, and they found it in Florida! Where Grammy and Bumpa live!”  His fearful wonderment has clearly turned to pure stress.  His bed head seems a little big for his lean body as his head bobbles in an expressive nature.  I have to laugh.  With New Smyrna Beach ranked the shark attack capital of the world (thanks Shark Week) and the recent hatching of a certain doubly blessed Milk Snake, its lookin like Florida is dropping to the bottom of Flynn’s list of vacation destinations.  I know he’s at least bringing his entire knife collection this year.

As I wipe the kitchen table, absorbing all signs of the children’s breakfast carnage, my feet are caught up uncomfortably on a truly awkward obstacle.  My attention is drawn to my feet.  It’s his pillow.  Just there, on the kitchen floor…its been tossed next to the darkened stain of grape juice that I’ve swept over/thru at least twice now.  At times I’ve looked at that pillow and have been plagued by the fact that I know deep down inside that I’ve gotten all comfortable on my bed with Owen…maybe I’ve eased into a cuddle with him…kinda let my guard down…and I know that pillow has snuck in under my filth radar. I know I’ve been reading books to people on our squishy, partially dilapidated vintage sofa, when I have conveniently used the raunchy thing to support my lower back.

It doesn’t matter what cycle of the laundering process it is in, its got built in grime.  When I see the dingy pillow laying on the kitchen floor, I want to make a note to myself to never again let that pillow anywhere near my face or any other part of me.  “Remember Autumn, that pillow goes…to the yard.  Remember, you saw it near the base of the toilet the other day…Please Remember.”  But I know the reality is that you have these moments in your life that are so riddled with all this other, more pressing stuff…that something as tolerable and insignificant as “dirt” starts to become part of the set design.

I know when I look at that pillow, that just this week Owen came to my bed with it and climbed in.  Its been over a year now that he has been a heavy night sleeper.  The year before that he was our ever consistent nightly visitor.  It was quite a thing.  I’d be too tired to argue so he’d climb over me into the middle groove and then I’d wake up a few hours later when Chris had experienced the final “heel to the back” of the night and he would transport Owen back to his bed.

Some mornings over coffee, Chris would express how much he didn’t “Love” carrying Owen (who has been said to be “built like a  brick shit house”…in the words of my late father) back down the hall to his own bed every single night.  I felt no need to defend my weakness.  “It’ll be a drop in the bucket someday…He’ll be a grown man and we will barely remember the entire year he spent nightly snuggled and thrashing between us.”  We’d have a thoughtful moment and get on with the day and that night I’d defenselessly turn a blind eye to the sneaky night walker and so on and so forth.

Until…it just stopped.  I woke up one morning all refreshed and surprised and I realized that was it…it would be less and less.  It might as well be over.  The funniest part was that it was right after Uncle Ben and Aunt Mare had given us their old queen size mattress (cause when you have as many kids/bed wetters as we do, you take peoples old matresses) and with no real destination in mind we tossed it in Owen’s room.  For the time being.  His previous twin mattress was a little weird to begin with and sometimes the kids dismantled the whole bed and made big obstacles thru out the room and basically we weren’t sad to see it go.  As it would turn out…I don’t think Owen had any interest in his cuddles with Chris or I in those wee hours, sleeping smashed between two people, each 3xs his size.  I now know it to be true that his original bed exuded levels of discomfort that drove him to evacuate nightly.   The first few times you’re evicted, your parents place is a good start when it comes to temporary relocation.  He knew we had the extra room.

So now, being over a year removed from those pesky nightly disturbances, my motherly heart leapt when his boyish frame approached my bedside and made the announcement that he had a scary dream about a monster and wanted to sleep with us.  It was like that filthy CARS pillow didn’t even exist.  “Come on in our bed little guy…whats that.?..You say this germ coated utility mop head comes with you?  Sure thing.  Hop in.  We’ve missed ya.”  Sometimes, after a long day in the home…fighting the good fight…I have found myself stepping into the afternoon sunlight and discovering that I’ve clearly been using my clothing as a tissue and a dishcloth and a paper towel and a bandaid and it feels surprising but then I remember what I signed up for.  I signed up to be ok with the details of this life.  I’ve signed up for a van interior that can now list “gum” and “milk” and “goldfish crackers” as some of the upgrades.  I’ve signed up for a perpetual laundry pile that a cat has been sleeping on and smells like boy urine somewhere around mid pile.  I’ve signed up for the slow payout that comes with the investment of spending every waking moment in the most beautiful, least glamorous role of my life.

During my brief time in Indiana, amidst my Bible College days, I had the privilege of nannying for a growing family of 6 (now 12!).   I can recall changing the parents bed sheets and thinking that I couldn’t understand how they could sleep with wooden blocks and sesame sticks in their sheets.  And then one day you wake up with some pretzel bits embedded in your arm skin and a toy basket dumped on your pillow…and you are enlightened.  They are the filthy details of a beautifully rich life.  The details you don’t want to miss, cause that would mean you were moving too fast. But you also dont want to put too much emphasis on them, cause that would mean you were missing the point.  More than likely though, this blog post is just my most elaborate excuse ever to avoid my chores.  A wonderful person eased my troubled mind when they told me that “housework is the most patient thing in the world. It will just WAIT and WAIT.”  And so it does.

                The morning feels like its gone on forever, but in actuality it is not yet 9 am.  The twins are freshly attached to their headphones, cyber school in session.  Owen and Micah are on a “book making binge”, folded construction paper and crayons everywhere.  Across two rooms Flynn begins to speak to me in a volume that says “I have headphones blarring in my ears while I talk to you.”  Joy the Cat has just prowled thru the school room before sprawling out on a wool rug in a sun beam near the front door.  Flynn alerts me, “Mom, when can we give Joy a bath again?  She smells like poop.  Like on her face.” Knowing that shes had a few late nights this week, bustin free and makin trouble, gettin filthy in the hood…I know that what Flynn says is most likely the truth.  Seated in front of and diagonal to Flynn, and also hooked into the same vein of information delivery via audio/video feed, twin sister Iris turns her head toward the conversation.  She looks to be a mixture of tired and dispondant.  With very little opposition in her voice she adds to the dialogue, “I took a bath a couple days ago…” Flynn and I look at each other like we both know we have the best news to share with someone.  Thru a really large smile I was delighted to inform Iris that we were, in fact, talking about Joy the Cat…and not “the only girl”, “the family peanut”, “the sweet little lady that fills our days with sunshine and rainbows”.  “No, Iris…your face does not smell like poop.  We were talking about Joy the Cat.”  A relieved smile creeped across her face as the three of us errupted in uncontainable laughter.  She is a true sister to 3 brothers.  Her complete lack of shock when perhaps overhearing her brother say that “her face smells like poop”, proves her familial position.  More power to girls growing up surrounded by boys.