I used to be an organized person.
Well, I suppose I still am in some respects, but not the way I used to be. Not the way I long to be as I look around our woefully neglected abode and ask myself, “What happened? What in the world happened to us during the past seven years to bring us to this?”
Because when I look around this place, I see so many things that I wish I could fix with a wave of a magic wand — sink-fulls of dishes, piles of laundry, mountains and mountains of toys that seem to materialize out of thin air, stacks of un-filed paperwork, medical supplies run amok, and spring cleaning sessions that haven’t happened for so many springs that it’s pretty much pointless. It all happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance. Not really. It’s easy to be a Martha Stewart prodigy when everything is going your way. But then it happened. Everything. And it kept coming…
Two years of infertility, multiple miscarriages, a high-risk pregnancy, a serious birth defect, a new baby, code blues, trachs, G-tubes, 27 surgeries, countless ER visits, feeding complications, an elusive diagnosis, cross-country medical odysseys, truckloads of medical equipment, mountains of paperwork, baby number two with severe reflux, and a run-down immunocompromised mom with asthma who comes down with pneumonia every time someone sneezes within 500 yards of her.
It’s tough to get into that “new mom” routine in the best of circumstances, but I missed the boat completely. I know how to be organized when there are just two of us with college degrees who voluntarily use proper eating utensils in a socially acceptable manner. However, I do not know how to get through fourteen hours with anything remotely resembling organization when it involves two kids under age six who refuse to eat anything except applesauce and casein-free cheese slices and who’s favorite form of amusement involves plastering the cat with Disney Princess stickers.
So organized I am not — at least not in the most literal sense of the word. But you know what? That’s OK. Because I am organized when it comes to getting my children the medical care they need. I am organized when it means battling insurance companies for the rights of my children to receive proper treatment. I might not have all my laundry done, but today I taught my little girl about Mozart and Cézanne, about Madagascar and the life cycle of plants. I was there for her today in case she needed me — teaching her at home because I saw the faces of the public school officials blanch white when I told them this summer that I had performed the Heimlich maneuver on my prospective kindergartner twice in the past 6 months. So maybe I don’t do organized as well as I would like, but I know how to handle chaos really really well. That’s something, isn’t it?
All this other stuff, this stuff I wish I could whisk into order with a magic wand? Well, I’m working on that too. Tonight, my husband and I sorted and filed a box-full of paperwork. Tomorrow we’ll take on something else. We’ve pledged ourselves to one hour devoted to reclaiming order in our household each night after we’ve put the kids to bed. I’ve made a hit list of all of the tasks that need taken on to restore sanity around here and now that I’ve had two pneumonia-free months I’m starting to believe in that tiny little organized piece of my soul once more. You know the piece I mean — you have one too — it’s that itty bitty half-suffocated one buried alive under seventeen cubic tons of medical bills, IEP’s, PT/OT schedules, 504’s, appointment cards and misplaced post-it notes. Remember?
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