Space Invasion
Every afternoon during the golden hour, I notice dust on the floor of my bedroom.
I’m sure varying layers of filth cover this house all of the time, but I only seem to notice when direct sunlight streams through the sliding glass door and illuminates the floor. I’m bothered by the dust, and I won’t pretend I’m not, but I’m more bothered by the teething toys scattered nearby. I blinked last week and my baby woke up crawling. I seem to be in denial, though, because I keep putting her on a blanket with a handful of toys and when I turn around, she is three feet from where I left her, dragging those same toys under my writing desk.
Can I call it a writing desk if I never write there?
I prefer to write in bed propped up against the headboard. Or on the couch with my feet resting on the coffee table, or sprawled out on the floor like a teenager, belly sinking into the carpet with my back in a perfect arch.
The desk looks nice, though. Very official. Very creative. I sit there once in a blue moon and pay bills or check emails or write to-do lists. There’s a macrame plant hanger just above it, a perfect cocoon for the dead plant inside. The plant has been dead for months, but I haven’t gotten around to disposing of it. I tried watering it first, setting it out in the sun, rinse, repeat. The thing is dead. But to admit such is to admit failure and I guess I haven’t been ready to proclaim defeat.
The tape dispenser is missing from my desk. The stapler, too. My boys “borrow” these things to create comic books on a daily basis. First, they take all the paper out of the printer. If I had a dollar for every time I went to print something and got a “Load Paper” error message in return, I would have at least 53 dollars. Their comic books are quite good, though, and because I want my children to be creative, I rarely complain about my missing office supplies.
If anything, it is one more reminder this room doesn’t belong to me.
For every boundary I’ve attempted to set, for every no-jumping-on-the-bed hiss and every please-get-your-stuffed-animals-out-of-here command, they return, again and again, to my space, my bed, my bathroom, my desk. As if the walls themselves are invisible and there is no distinction between their room and my room. As if we live in one fluid container of common space.
As if everything that is mine is also theirs.
I often catch myself trying, desperately, to carve out a place for myself in this house—somewhere they can’t find me, somewhere they can’t reach me, somewhere I can be alone or keep things clean for ten minutes at a time. A corner untouched by greasy fingers, unmarked by baby drool. Somewhere free of dust. Somewhere quiet.
Much like all those nights I slathered coconut oil across my stomach, determined to avoid stretch marks, these efforts are mostly in vain.
My belly stretched three times for three different babies, and it shows. We have three kids living in this house, and it shows. They leave footprints all over the floor, and by footprints I mean actual trails of bark and sand that fall out of their shoes every day when they come home from school. Everywhere I turn, there is proof of them. They are like little dogs marking their territory.
Literally.
Sometimes they pee in my toilet.
***
This past January, we had our third and final baby, a precious girl after two boys. I expected both of them to fall in love with her, to welcome their new baby sister into the fold with rampant enthusiasm. My boys were four and six at the time, and if I had been asked to place a bet on who would fawn over her more, my money would have been on our six-year-old, Everett. He’s the one who cannot go anywhere without a herd of stuffed animals in tow, a collection he affectionately calls his babies.
Make no mistake: Everett loves and adores his baby sister.
But Carson, our now middle child, seems to be on a different level. He is, and I use this word intentionally, obsessed with her. Every day he sits with her on the floor, holds her hand in the car, climbs in the crib to smother her with affection after a nap. While this fondness goes both ways, she’s still a baby, one who pulls his hair and claws at his face and drools all over him. Hopelessly devoted, he remains unfazed.
Everett, on the other hand, has what we call boundaries. He does not want the baby near his babies, or his books, or any of his toys. If she starts army crawling toward his bedroom, he leaps up to shut the door. If at any point she is near him or his things, he snatches them up in a preventative measure, careful to keep everything that belongs to him away from her grabby paws.
He enjoys holding his sister, sure, but only if he can guarantee she won’t spit up on him. A few times he hasn’t been so lucky and I still tease him about the way his face recoiled in horror.
“Everett, buddy,” I remind him with a smile, “If you want to be a daddy someday, getting spit up on is part of the job.”
He smirks at me and goes back to reading DogMan, carefully tucking himself into the corner of the couch, safe from baby slobber.
***
If my husband had a dollar for every time he came home to find me maniacally vacuuming the house, he would have more than 53 dollars.
And yet—it’s another day, another golden hour, and there is still dust on the floor. Outside, vibrant shades of orange and pink swirl over the boys while they jump on the trampoline. Our backyard currently looks like an abstract painting. Inside, all I see is dust.
I’m trying to ignore the dirty floor as I sit in our unmade bed, laptop warming the tops of my legs while I attempt to respond to three e-mails before the baby wakes up. Stacks of folded laundry are piled around me in a variety of colors and sizes, evidence of the five humans living in this house. There is a paper airplane on the rug, teething toys under my desk, a used burp cloth on my nightstand (which, for the record, doesn’t smell great).
A few years ago I was talking to a friend, commiserating over the impossible nature of keeping our homes clean. For me, it was the floors. For her, it was fingerprints on the sliding glass door.
“My mom says I’ll miss this someday,” she sighed, “Finding little handprints on the sliding glass door.”
I often think about that conversation when I’m wiping down the refrigerator or spraying cleaner on the closet mirrors. Unlike vacuuming up a portion of the school sandbox left by the front door, wiping away fingerprints elicits a different emotion from me.
I actually do think I’ll miss that someday—tangible proof my kids were here. In my bedroom, invading my space, touching the closet mirror while they admire their new haircuts. Is this simply one of a dozen juxtapositions of motherhood? This feeling of wanting more space to think, to create, to sit in silence staring at a clean floor for just ten minutes while simultaneously coping with pangs of nostalgia every time I erase fingerprints from the mirrors?
Sometimes the idea of running away to a cabin in the woods sounds tempting. More childcare does, too. Should I keep dreaming? A bigger house would be nice. Maybe a bedroom with an actual door that closes all the way and locks (ours doesn’t, on both accounts). Then again—I have a real writing desk, and I never write there. I write most of my words in the middle of this circus, blending into my surroundings with all these kids, in all this mess.
Is my writing better for it?
If I had the space, would I take it?
Am I willing to give up a sunset just so I won’t notice the dust?
As I hit send on the last e-mail, I shut my laptop and return it to the writing desk where I never write. When I plug the charger in, I notice four loose staples sitting on top of my desk. They look crooked and gnarled, as if they’ve been through some kind of trauma. I sweep them up with a sigh and toss them in the trash. My stapler is nowhere to be found.
What kind of comic books did they create today? I wonder.
I walk across the dust, stepping carefully over the paper airplane, to go find out.
Words and photo by Ashlee Gadd.