A Day in the Life: Better Together

I love the little coincidences in life that draw me, for a reflective moment, out of the dizziness of the daily grind. I had one of those moments this week when I happened upon the missing piece of my son’s puzzle in the refrigerator.

At 20 months, Henry isn’t confined by the formalities of organization and logical sequence–the puzzle piece was forgotten in the instant he discovered the brawny sense of satisfaction derived from shutting the refrigerator door! But there was good humor and clarity for me, as I was shoving aside bottles of mayonnaise and jars of pickles, searching for the cream cheese and found, instead, a little green pentagon, moist with condensation–I may as well have found a smile. For a few moments, as I returned the little token of happy-go-lucky-ness to its proper place in the shape puzzle, I appreciated the disorder that Henry adds to the order I spend so much time and energy trying to preserve.

In an effort to make order of my study a few weeks ago I unpacked our books and organized them on the shelf. I also unpacked a piece of art that I ordered just after my husband and I got married. It’s been sitting in its box, wrapped in plastic, floating on a cloud of packing peanuts ever since it was delivered, because of the “no holes in the wall” policy that was in effect at the apartment we lived in while we were in school, we never could hang it up. Now that we own our home and can put holes in the wall at will, I decided it was time to unveil the painting. After I emptied the boxes, I broke them down and took them out to the recycling bin in the alley behind the house. Not knowing if the packing peanuts were recyclable, I just propped the painting’s box up against the regular garbage can to be taken with the rest of the trash. A day or two later, a blustery wind storm blew in, tipped the box over and sent hundreds of packing peanuts tumbling through our back alley. I shamefully admit the fact that I didn’t get up first thing the following morning to clean up the mess that I was responsible for. No, instead, I let the peanuts blow, and scatter and wedge between blades of grass for three whole days, never admitting that I was the dim-wit who left an open box of packing peanuts outside during a windstorm, though I always intended to clean them up.

But one day as my husband and I were pulling out of the driveway, I said, “you know all those packing peanuts that are all over the neighbors’ yards?” And he said, “yeah, I’ve been wondering who did that–it’s really inconsiderate to just leave them laying around like that. What an eyesore for the neighborhood!” And then a look of disbelief-meets-realization spread over his face and I sheepishly confirmed his suspicions, “Yeah, those are our packing peanuts.” I told him what I had done, explaining that I never imagined that they would end up strewn all over the neighbors’ yards like that.

The process of plucking and raking and gathering was tedious, but I had some tremendous laughs the afternoon we cleaned them up. I was using a rake; my husband was walking around with a grocery baggie picking them up by hand–we looked like a pair of inmates doing community service. For those of you who have never gathered stray packing peanuts, they are like hummingbird feathers–when the slightest little hint of a breeze came up, our piles of raked peanuts went sailing! Raking up peanuts doesn’t have quite the same charm that raking autumn leaves does–the peanuts lack that hearty, organic crunch that makes raking leaves so invigorating and festive. All this is to say that in an attempt to make order of my study this week, I completely disturbed the orderliness of my neighborhood.

In spite of our best efforts to maintain order, family life is, at times, marvelously disordered. What can be expected when toddlers, teenagers and adults convene under one roof? Although puzzle pieces end up in the fridge and packing peanuts sail through the neighborhood, and the family formation seems like a clumsy coincidence, it is, in reality a matter of perfect order that we’re grouped together as families. Day, by day, by disorganized day, we sow portions of love, loyalty, humor, and unity. And in some ordinary moment we realize that from our frequently disorganized, common experience, extraordinarily durable bonds of love have emerged and bound us so tightly together that while we might be more organized independently, we would be less—significantly less—complete.