Where You Lead, I Will Follow

Mary's First Quilt Top

Where you lead, I will follow. Mary bought me a key chain for Christmas a year ago, it has those words from the theme song of the Gilmore Girls show. Mary and I watch this show when we have a chance. The characters are unrealistically snarky, (read: life is not a sitcom, we are not a comedy act) but it is a show about a mother and daughter and a grandma and their relationships.

A while ago my mom commented~ your kids are just like you and Bill. Mary is doing her bullet journal and sewing and Calvin likes trains. Both kids like piano and traveling.

I guess we do have a lot of interests in common, but Bill and I would say that actually the kids are not like us, they are better than us. We are often inspired by them and motivated to be more of our our best selves. I think eventually all parents learn from their children. At least that is the plan. The hope.

A few years ago, well. . . 2014 to be exact. . . I purchased a book titled The Life Changing Art of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. The spark of joy book. This scratched a big itch. There are several old blog entries about it. The problem for us OCD sparkers is that we really want to spark it all. Our own stuff. Our pets' stuff. Our neighbor's stuff. Most of all. . . our kids' stuff.

Calvin is no saint, but to be completely honest back then it was Mary's stuff that haunted me. Trinkets. Hundreds of Trinkets. Books. Doll clothes. Little collectables. Craft supplies. Objects of nature. Birthday gifts from twelve girls. Every year. Actually probably thousands of trinkets. Candy wrapper collections. Sacred papers. Stuffed animals adopted from every corner of the world. And their babies. You KNOW what they say about rabbits.

I blamed myself. After all, as her mother I bought her most of this stuff and the rest just multiplied and became part of the early childhood museum that was the overstuffed hopelessly cluttered 12 foot by 12 foot stacked to the ceiling twilight zone called Mary's room.

Ms. Kondo is very firm. You can't spark other people's stuff. Not even in the middle of the night when you know there is no way in God's green earth she will miss some of this stuff if you silently slip it into a black hefty big and stealthily heave it curbside. I would never do that. Just saying. I never did that. I swear.

Kondo recommends just setting the example. So, Mom and Dad's room, just across the hall became an oasis of calm tidiness, almost mimicking a Marriott Courtyard without even a pen on the nightstand.

The transformation didn't happen overnight. I would say it was a slow and steady wins the race kind of change. First her desk started looking functional. Trinkets started making their way toward the garbage bin. Games were sorted. Collections were culled. I can't exactly pinpoint the moment of lift. I think it was when the dandelion fuzzy collection met its maker.

Now, at 15, Mary's room has nothing under the bed. Clothes hanging freely in the closet. Books are on the shelves. Only the top 200 stuffed rabbits made the cut. They are settled in sweet hanging planters on the wall. Baby quilts came down. Travel souvenirs went up. Little by little she grew up and cleaned her room. She made it her own place.

Having a messy room is not necessarily a character flaw. My point is that no amount of nagging and trying to help or pestering ever made a difference. Eventually she just drank the spark of joy Kool-Aid. Marie Kondo was right. We set the example. She followed.

How many other things in life are just like this. We can pester the daylights out of the kids, but eventually they just end up following our lead. In their own time and space.

Our best parenting technique may well turn out to be just being our own very best selves.
Where you lead, I will follow.

It won't be long until we are following them. Maybe even by eighteen. This is what we wanted.

This blog? A long-winded way of saying most things turn out okay. Give them a little time.
God bless. . .