Tripped up

Originally uploaded by laundrylessons.

I trip over laundry every day. A basket, wedged between the laundry room door and the back hall attacks my leg and pulls me off balance. A towel, dropped in the middle of the hall, must be skirted so I don’t drop Merritt as I carry her to her room. Daily, Graham leaves his pajama bottoms on the kitchen floor. And the always present socks, scattered in every room, catch on my feet as I hustle through the house. Little things, lying around disrupt my balance, and interrupt my flow.

Some days feel like a succession of stumbles. Today the kids missed the bus. The flow of the morning was halted as the neighbors and my kids loaded into the car. At 11:00 the new dishwasher was installed. This is a good thing, because the old one was spewing a crusty white film of soap through its cracks and crevices, but it interrupted my writing day. After only being gone from the house for an hour I hoofed it back home to meet the installer. I’d lost my flow and it wasn’t even noon.

Why do I feel like a mighty river one day, gliding over giant boulders and grabbing tree trunks, letting them wash away in my current, while other days I’m the dried up creek, barely able to gather enough momentum to wash an old tennis ball across my pebbles? Do you feel like that? “On fire, give me what you got world, throw me your best shot”, only to be tripped up the next moment by inconveniences? Going with the flow is what we say when we’re dealing well with the junk in our path. But on those other days, when we’re tripping over ourselves, and everyone else’s issues, what are we? Mired in muck? Tripped up by trouble? Bogged down in bothersome bull?

I’m hoping that I can flow gracefully in ’08. But I find nothing more awesome than a mountain stream that has to fight its way down hill. Usually tucked in between steep sides of the foothills, these streams churn and splash white water toward the sky, pushing themselves through narrow spots, tight curves and over Volkswagen-sized boulders. The majesty comes in the strength of the flow, not the smoothness of the current. If I can’t demonstrate grace in the adversity this year, I will try to put on a display of power. That’s what the heavy duty cycle is all about.