Footprints

Messes make me crazy.  I can’t stand them.  I like things to be neat; to have a place. In fact, I keep baskets all over my house to collect clutter. I have baskets for my shoes, baskets for my jewelry, baskets for my garbage; I even have baskets for my baskets.   The problem is, life isn’t often neat.  It’s chaotic. It’s unpredictable.  It’s messy.  Especially when you have kids. 

                I was just starting to get to the point where my life felt clean again.  I had lived through five years of messes with my first two children, growing up just two years apart.  In fact, my husband and I had accumulated so much “mess” during those first five years, that we built a new house…one with an extra bedroom, a two car garage, and a master bath for my husband and me ONLY.  For a while, things were good.  We had lots of space to move around.   My girls had even begun to pick-up after themselves.  Everything was falling into place.  Then the boys came along. 

When the twins were born, they brought their own mess with them...the kind of mess left behind after a hurricane.   Messes made from diapers and bottles and pieces of plastic toys.  I had forgotten what it was like to come home from work and have to step over mountains of mayhem on my way to the kitchen table.  Now footprints and fingerprints cover my carpet and garner my glass doors.  My house is full of footprints. 

We all want our kids to follow in our footprints.  I was tickled when my eldest daughter emphatically stated that she wanted to be a teacher…just like her mom.  And I get such a kick out of taking walks with my youngest and teaching her about the same bugs and butterflies that fascinated me as a child.  However, the footprints I’m most proud of have been made my students.  Two of my former students work at Children’s Hospital; two are graduates of CAPA and used my class as the impetus for their majors; and one recently published three poems online after finishing our class unit on poetry.  These footprints last a lot longer than the ones in my carpet; and they have a greater impact, too.  Windex or Hoover can’t clean these marks away.  They’re likely to stick around for quite some time. 

When I’m alone in my “new” house, I sometimes sit and wonder what my life would be like without my children.  It’d be less messy, that’s for sure.  There’d be no dents in my walls, no food on the floor, and no stains on the carpet.  The only footprints found would be those left behind by my own stocking feet.  But those aren’t the footprints that last.  Those don’t stick around.  They only survive until the next good cleaning…then they’re gone. But I’ll have the memories of my children’s laughter, hugs, and kisses forever.  Those footprints I don’t mind so much.

 I wonder sometimes too, what my life would have been like if I hadn’t been a teacher.  What would I have done?  Who would I have been?  Maybe a writer.  Or a homemaker.  Perhaps—if my mother’d had her way—a nurse.  Those professions may have been “cleaner.”  I mean, my desk wouldn’t currently be cluttered with post-its and pencils and folded up love letters; my bag wouldn’t be pregnant with piles of papers waiting to be graded and returned.  Life would have been less messy.  But a lot less happy.  Like my children, my students are my legacy; they’re the footprints I leave behind.  They’ll  last, too.  But, these footprints I can handle.  Even if they do make my life a little messy.