La Vie Boheme

This week and last week I have been feeling overwhelmed and sensitive about the lack of "things" in my house. It started last Monday morning when I woke up and couldn't get past the fact that I still don't have a proper bed and I'm in my 30s. At the moment we make do with a box spring and mattress, a big step up from the mattress we used to have on the floor. Why don't we just go to Ikea and pick up something cheap, you might ask? Good question. Here's the answer: Steve and I made an anti-consumerist vow not to buy any "temporary" furniture; we would wait instead until we could afford good and solid pieces that would last the rest of our lives and avoid adding one more poorly-made bed frame (and dining room set, and living room furniture, and television) to the landfill. But I'm starting to feel like it's time to buy something already because our living conditions are just plain weird.

Last week I couldn't help but look at our house the way visitors must look at it. I felt like journalist Gail Sheehy must have felt on her first visit to the dilapidated Grey Gardens mansion to meet the eccentric Big Edie and her daughter, Little Edie Bouvier Beale - full of shock and awe that real people were actually living in such a run-down crazy place and seemingly okay with it. At least I don't have raccoons inside my house like the Bouvier Beale ladies...at least I don't yet, but believe me they look in our windows like it's only a matter of time.

Who do I think I'm kidding? It's obvious that the "couches" I've created in our front room with a big bunch of fabric and throw pillows are the kids' beds. The old change table in our bedroom is too wide to pass as a book shelf, I should know this. And the old jam jars are just that and belong in the recycle bin; I can't keep passing them off as water glasses. We need so much stuff in order to be considered a normal North American family, starting with a whole house instead of just the main floor and an actual bed frame.

So my "to buy" list feels a tad long at the moment and this is overwhelming because I don't have any time to buy anything anyway, and no car to cart all my stuff home and no means of entertaining the kids on what would be long and tedious errands.

In the midst of all this I needed to think about my focus for the month of March and went out for a long run to process my thoughts. I wasn't expecting to meet my goddaughter at the park where I run the trails, but there she was, out toddling around in the way that only two-year-olds can, enamored with a rock and a dog and a mom that passed by pushing a baby in a carriage. I stopped, talked, pointed out a tree that had been gnawed by a beaver, gave the girl a big squeeze and - wouldn't you know it - felt a million times better about myself and my life when I got back home. Children - my own and others - remind me that feeling good within and without is the result of treating ourselves gently, meeting our daily physical needs for nutritious food, vigorous exercise, lots of water and sunshine along with meeting spiritual needs like connecting with others and nature. I'm always the first to tell my children that buying more "things" isn't going to make them any happier. As I said goodbye to my goddaughter and finished my run I knew that of all the fruits of the Spirit what I really needed to focus on this month was growing in gentleness - towards myself and the planet - and that this would do more to help me feel right in the world than any amount of furniture ever could.

Shopping can wait. I think that treating myself gently - meeting my physical and spiritual needs - is the only priority for which it's worth rearranging a schedule. If browsing for a bed frame means I won't have time for a much-needed run, and if a shopping list makes me feel like I don't have even half an hour to sit and read a few scriptures and pray, then it's the browsing and the shopping that I need to comprise, and not my health. People before things, wise women have always said. Besides, the earth needs some gentle treatment too. I don't need to add more discarded purchases to our planet's garbage dumps, and I would undoubtedly end up tossing what I buy in haste sooner rather than later.

So I ran three times last week and I actually got up to the loft to read scripture every morning and I just got back from a wonderful afternoon at the playground with the kids. I don't have a very clean house this week or even a whole house or even any gosh-darned furniture to put in my house, but I think a spirit of gentleness is more important than all that anyway - it's got to be. As Big Edie said, "My body is a very precious place." So is our planet. And my challenge this month is to judge my life more gently, by how I FEEL on the inside, instead of fretting about what surrounds me on the outside. And I think Mother Earth will thank me for this. But my house will still look weird.