Dis(sing) Order

         “But Mom, why does it matter if I have a perfectly tidy room?”

         “Because it…..well it just….it just does. And make your bed too!“ I said lamely, not knowing the real answer to the question, nor how to justify my request.

         “Isn’t it more important for me to go outside and enjoy nature? Or play my guitar? Or hike up the mountain and ski down? There’s so much I want to do!”

         “Just do what I ask and then you can do all those thing you want to do afterwards.”

         “But Mom! It’ll take forever and who really cares anyway? I like my room this way. And hangers are stupid when you can just throw your pants over the rod or on the bed. That works just as well. I always have pants on, Mom. I always find my pants, Mom!!!”

         He was right, and I left questioning my unyielding need for his tidiness. Truly, did it really matter? Nature, music and exercise were definitely better choices than fiddling with hangers and arranging papers on a desk.

         When I was a kid I remember my mother continuously badgering me about tidying up my room. The entire area was basically a disaster, with clothes in nonsensical heaps in corners….or the middle of the room, shoes mismatched and just thrown willy-nilly into the closet, and my desk littered with papers, books, special trinkets, chocolate bar wrappers, and money from babysitting jobs. I didn’t see the need for hangers either, always found my pants too…..even if they were stirrup pants of the 80’s.... and frankly always looked respectable (even in the stirrup pants of the 80’s).  And make my bed? What the heck for? I was just going to get into it again that night. I never did understand when my mom would say things like “Make your bed! How can you get into an unmade bed?” Huh?

         So what happened to make me so fastidious now? I suppose it had something to do with either harmless rebellion (who? me?), or carelessness due to the fact that the house and room were not actually mine. I didn’t feel a respect for that room, nor obviously my clothing, and perhaps had I been less fortunate, I would have appreciated my circumstance and things would have been different. How can a twelve, fifteen or even seventeen year old be thankful for their own room, new clothing and a decent bed, when they’ve never known what it’s like to be without? And even though my parents taught me to be kind and compassionate to those less fortunate, I really had no idea. I had a painted white wood canopy bed, for god’s sake, with a white eyelet covering and dust ruffle to match. My room had a view of the beautiful lake we lived on, sole access to a tiny yet charming porch on the roof, and although my closet was small, it was deep, and filled with two tiers of lovely clothing. I was treated like a princess, and don’t remember wanting for anything….(except for maybe for my brother to be sent to boarding school….or Kenny to ask me on a roller skating date).  Hell, the worst situation I remember being in is when we found little bugs in our hotel room….in Switzerland…during a fabulous 3 week European adventure….

         So, was it my mother’s relentless hounding that finally brainwashed me into being tidy, or was it just a maturity-respect-appreciation-gratitude thing that took me years to comprehend? Maybe both….or maybe as we get older, and the responsibility, chaos and our awareness of atrocities increase, we search for places in which we can be host to the control.

         Heck, when I was a kid, I thought chaos was only a theory related to the unpredictable nature of a system due to its initial variable…..but now I know what chaos really means. It means my kids arguing at the same time that the home phone and cell phone are ringing, the dog is eating the brownies off the counter, I’m out of toilet paper, and my husband is shouting down the stairs that he can’t find his car keys. And the word chaos doesn’t even describe it accurately…as now I use words like entropy and pandemonium…and phrases like all hell’s broken loose….to describe not only my family life, but the ridiculous world in which we live. Seriously, when the headlines in the papers are dominated by pathetic and irrelevant accounts of extramarital affairs and American Idol recaps, at the same level as disastrous earthquakes and health care issues, you have to wonder if we’re a schizophrenic society or just basically beyond all hope. And new today, at the top of the list, is the correlation between ED and heart attacks. Do we really need to know that studies indicate that those with erectile dysfunction are more prone to cardiovascular disease than those who have no problem raising the flag? It’s no doubt! And now that the news is stressing out those listless men even further, maybe the studies will actually be proven, as the media runs (ruins) our lives once again. Don’t those guys have enough to think about without more negative and stressful thoughts surrounding their unit? Sheesh. Give them some slack…..well…they already have that….they need affirmations!

         But hey - I’m tidy.  It is truly one of the only ways that I can direct some semblance of sanity in an otherwise insane and muddled world.

         But my son -well, he is at the age when responsibility is limited to remembering to take a shower, wear socks, and do his homework. He has the lovely ability to enjoy the day and not worry about paying the car insurance, lobbying for the environment and better education, or buying groceries. And although he thinks about his surroundings and how to make the world a better place, his ideas are fleeting and more of the ‘hey wouldn’t it be cool if’ type of ideas. Like his recent:

         “Hey mom, wouldn’t it be cool if there were attachments for amputees like lacrosse sticks and stuff, so that a kid could still play lacrosse by using his arm as a stick??!” Hey – that’s actually pretty thoughtful for a 12 year old.

         In any case, I suppose he knows that mom and dad are on top of it, so that he can concentrate on kid stuff. He doesn’t have a need for less chaos, because there frankly isn’t very much in his simple and charmed life. And regardless of whether his room appears to be evidence of the entropy theory or not, he still finds his pants…..locating them being one of his only responsibilities. Lucky him.

         So, I guess I’ll back off a bit. I expect that at some point, his sense of respect for spaces and clothing, and his appreciation for his circumstances will come….because I will continue to encourage him to come from a place of gratitude and not expectation.  OR….he’ll be 40, still living at home, still tinkering with that bloody lacrosse stick, still searching for his pants.….and end up on some sad cable show about lunatic hoarders!

         Pray for me.