So, I can home last week to a structured, ordered and clean life.
My lover and I had been granted a week’s leave pass. An international one at that. It had been granted to us by my mum and dad who even though it was mid-winter and even though they were due for their northern migration, they had put off the warming of their bones by one week. The stepped up and stepped into the day-to-day running of our lives. And in taking over the running sheet of my home life domestication, they let my lover and I rediscover our own lost life together.
Gifting us with sacred time on our own.
My small ones were pacified at the thought of our leaving by the promise of nana and poppy being in our home. There’s such a magic relationship between a grandparent and a child. Tendencies and habits with carried connections passed on through spiralled DNA chains. My smalls all love madeira cake, think ALDI meatballs are a delicacy and follow AFL football passionately enough to be involved in family footy tipping run by my dad.
Even though I don’t know what round it is.
Our return trip home took no less than 48 hours. It involved four countries, five airlines and an inappropriate time without oral hygiene. Having my body in economy class bolt upright and unwashed for that amount of time made me so tired that I was seeing through time when we pulled up at in front of our seaside cottage door.
We were greeted by a sparkle that could have blinded any weary traveller’s eye. My smalls were so excited at our promised return, they had wagged a mid-week school day to shower us with hugs. Their hair was brushed and they each wore matching socks, they smelt like cusson’s imperial leather and fresh skin. I stepped inside our home to meet a kitchen that gleamed and matching shiny floors. My fridge shelves were clean. My pantry had a system. My bathroom glowed and the toilet seat had been replaced. Each part of my domestic world, from the hair on my small’s heads to the floor of the family car was immaculate. Everything had been graced with my parent’s touch. It made me feel so happy to be home and so grateful to receive this week as a gift. A time where my parents had taken over and regained my structure and order.
And at the same time, making me see how just easy it is to surface clean your life.
Think abdominal twists, lateral side openers and earth based backbends.
My parents come from a generation that celebrates the weekly washing of cars in their driveway and the wearing of immaculate ironed clothes everyday. In my world, my car has been triaged to the bottom of the pile of my to-do list of life, and I haven’t owned any type of ironing tool in over 5 years. However, I do clean my own house. And I do this at the start of every working week. Yet when I saw how my parents could make a place sparkle from the floor to the ceiling, I realises that I was very good at cleaning things that are already pretty clean.
And avoiding getting stuck into things that were kinda dirty and stuck.
We can move through our life’s journey tackling the easy things. Pouring our energy into tasks that really don’t require much of it or of us. We may think that we are living our lives fully and evolving on our path completely when we are really only moving through easy street on automatic pilot. We can fall into the habit of re-wiping the same clean bench. Of re-washing the same clean section of the floor. Because it’s easy. Because it doesn’t require much thought. And we can all believe we’re all so crazy busy and that we are holding our structure and our order. Driving around in our dusty shit-filled cars in shirts that have been pressed by our bathroom steam. Forgetting to go where it’s difficult. Avoiding to work where it’s hard.
Missing out on feeling the layers that when searched for deeply, will always finds their grace and their way.
Our practice invites us to explore different aspects of our body and it’s systems. It allows for us to feel into forgotten spaces and underused emotions. It gives us insight as to where we may be re-wiping the same surfaces and working insufficiently. It gives us a place where we can see where we are too comfortable and where we are wasting our time.
My time with my lover was sacred. My time away form my domestication invaluable. But my time meeting back into my parents and my heritage was timeless. It made me head out and buy a new iron.
And now I’m looking for someone to help me to fucking clean.
x