Sheets... and Home Smells

About two weeks ago now, my parents' phone rang later in the evening.  Todd was in Haiti on a Work and Witness team with a friend and pastor from South Carolina.  I was busy trying to forget the day and how sub-par I'd been as a parent.  I was wallowing in homesickness and sleep deprivation when the phone was handed to me.  I tried really hard to understand what was being said because the friend on the other end of the line, I thought, had just offered me her house.  Part of me was instantly sick because I immediately thought of the thousands of ways my children would ruin her beautifully kept home.  The other part of me was relieved that we might actually know where we would be washing our clothes for longer than two weeks.  Gypsy life isn't for everyone and I'm certain it's most definitely not for me.  I relish washing my sheets in my laundry detergent and hanging them on my washing line.  I love making my beds just right and tucking my babes in to the sheets I've worked so hard with for just that particular moment when they snuggle down, put their arms under the covers, and smell the sweet freshness of momma's hard work.  I've been deeply missing that moment of domestic accomplishment because, as I've been realizing more and more, I love my family through small, finite measures of hard work that go mostly unseen.  

I distinctly remember the time period after Todd and I got engaged but before we were married when I felt like a kid in a candy store.  I wasn’t giddy about bridal dress shopping but because we got to go into stores and were handed what I might consider the world’s BEST toy: the registry gun.

Now some might argue that it’s great until you don’t get something you really wanted, but I beg to differ. My opinion is that you use that thing so much, and on so many different things, that you completely forget 90% of what you shoot with that gun because you can point-and-scan anything. Two different sets of 4 glass ramekins? Yes, they look pretty and I like them both (totally didn’t cross my mind that I may want to, oh I don’t know, STACK them someday). Three different types of cream colored towels? Cream is a neutral so they’ll match anything (and will show ALL the dirty, skuzzy, grim that builds up rather quickly when you’re coaching soccer).

The one thing I do think I managed to get right, by the grace of a wonderful friend who had the foresight to see the issues in my registry and took it upon herself to get what she knew I NEEDED and not what I thought was “pretty” at the moment, was sheets (just like Polly and Kim who knew that EVERY woman, married or not, NEEDS a crock-pot and recipe book for it- bless you!). Just before our wedding, I was given a set of towels and a set of sheets for my bridal shower. After the shower, I was pulled aside and told that I had made a few mistakes and to listen to someone who’s “been there.” Problem number one; I hadn’t registered for sheets. When I protested this saying that Todd already had hand-me-downs from his parents, I was led to point number two; nothing makes you feel more grown-up and good than a NICE pair of clean sheets that YOU think are wonderful and decadent. Three; thread-count matters and no college hand-me-downs would ever have more than a 300 thread-count. She then opened the packaging of the most gorgeous white sheets I’d ever seen outside of a really nice hotel and shoved my hand directly into the middle of them. I tell you what, for a tactile person like me, you’d have thought I just discovered the most luxurious fleece straight from the dryer on a cold winter’s night. I don't recall exactly what they were, and looking back they had to be no less than 1,000,000 thread-count of Egyptian something-or-other, but all I knew was that I was NEVER letting them go!

The only thing no one warned me about was how bruised and battered sheets can get over the years. Also, that once you’ve had soft and silky, it’s hard to go back. Not impossible, but hard. Sadly, we were in South Africa less than 6 months when another wedding sheet set ripped (irreparably). Then one night Todd and I were going to bed when we heard a noise that broke my heart a little… tell-tale ripping. Sure enough, upon inspection, our beautiful white sheets had not one but 3 holes and 4 spots the size of a small pillow that would tear in the next wash or two.

I was sad.  Very, very sad.   Those sheets had seen us through half a decade and 5 moves. They’ve snuggled my first two babies and washed so easily when my babies weren’t too nice. They served as the backdrop to all my at-home-wanna-be-professional portraits of Em and Coop. Em loved when I pull them straight from the dryer and snuggle her in them on the couch. 

After the nostalgia and lethargy from losing my sheets wore off, I decided I was going to make something useful, and came up with a super-cute Christmas dress for Em. 
That was two babies ago and tonight, for some reason as I'm sitting in a massive blessing in the form of an actual house where all four of my babes are sleeping in a bed, I'm reminded that once again, I'm still emotionally tied to my sheets.  I'm tied to that part of me that wants to settle in to the smell of home.  I miss it.  My heart longs for the day when my child snuggles down and buries their face into sheets and says, "I smell the spring in my bed Mommy!" I'm so glad to be in a house, able to wash dishes at my leisure, but deep down, I know it's only temporary.  I know this stage of transition isn't over and part of me wishes I could just take a nap for the next 18 months because I just want to fast forward to wash day as I'm hanging up my sheets, knowing that night, I'll be able to snuggle down into them and smell the smell of wash day, the smell of momma work, the smell of home.