MUST BRING CHAOS

Dear Spike:

Finally, Friday.

Even with a day off for Thanksgiving this week, the days seemed to drag on and on. I’ve never been a live-for-the-weekend kind of guy, but these days it often feels as though I’m under water, all week long, just counting the seconds before I get to come up for air on Friday evening.

That’s when the three of us get together, hop in the big bed, sometimes order a pizza, and pop a movie into the DVD player.

Tonight was a bit different. About once every four or five months, your mother decides she “just can’t take it anymore,” and embarks upon a cleaning project so vast that we often must bring chaos to the entire home in order to bring it back into order.

Today’s project: Our bedroom closet (and in particular, my rather slovenly side of it. By the time I’d returned from work, this evening, your mother had completely emptied the closet onto the hallway floor. We spent the next three hours matching socks, tossing clothing that we no longer wear into giveaway bags and creating a latest, greatest system of organization that this time — this time for sure — will help me keep my side of the closet neat and tidy for more than a few weeks.

The best part of the night: Watching your mother try on dresses that she hasn’t fit into since she got pregnant. Just under six months after giving birth, she’s back into all of her old clothes. She looks fantastic and, I think, she is very proud about getting back into shape while also juggling work (her job is ten times tougher than mine) and mommydom — and occasionally doing things like emptying our entire bedroom closet.

I know you don’t know to be both proud of and humbled by your mother yet — but I know you will be someday. I certainly am.

Love,
dad