Mud Pies and Other Messes

"Can I make a Mississippi Mud Pie?" asked Tommy (10), inspired by the recipe in his Christmas gift, The Boys' Book of Greatness. Already in the kitchen chopping celery, carrots, and onion for a Bolognese sauce, I readily granted permission. So he began to cook alongside me, asking for my assistance in finding springform pans, getting chocolate from the garage, and melting the chocolate in the microwave. I multitasked in the absentminded manner I have when I'm both cooking dinner and calculating mentally exactly how much time I have left in my afternoon and which half of the things I originally planned on doing will actually fit in the next two hours.

With the sauce simmering, I started accompanying Karina on the piano as she practiced singing. Her voice inched higher in her warm up exercises and I congratulated myself that I had left enough time to practice with her before we left for ballroom dance. Then I heard a yell.

"Mom! The pan's leaking!"

I ran into the kitchen. Runny chocolate batter seeped from the pan onto the counter, dotted the oven floor, rack, and door, and trailed around the kitchen island in a nearly complete oval. I sighed as I stared at the mess. The destruction of my afternoon plans, my kitchen, and my equanimity must have shown on my face because Tommy asked, "Mom? Are you mad?'

"No. I'm just trying to decide what to do."

I have heard that all springform pans leak. This may be true, but mine has been bent out of shape enough that instead of a drip, it flowed freely.

"I'll move it to a new pan," I said, pouring the batter into a bowl and scraping the remnants of the graham cracker crust, now mixed with chocolate, into a tart pan, "you clean up the floor."

Life is messy. This has been on my mind recently, ever since I read The 10 Commitments: Parenting with Purpose by Chick Moorman. He outlines ten aspects of parenting, suggesting that parents congratulate themselves where they are already successful and improve in the areas where they are less than stellar. I knew I had found one of my weaknesses with the very first one: "I commit to remembering that experience can be messy."

He continues, "I accept that sand, mud, food, paint, cooking, eating, relationships, emotions, and social interactions can be messy. I allow my children to learn from making messes and the cleanup that follows. I recognize that experience can be messy."

"The cleanup that follows"--four words I cannot get out of my head. In my household, the making messes half of the commitment reigns. Crafts, books, food, clothes, papers, and toys get spread everywhere. I have failed to assist my children in developing the good habit of cleaning up after themselves, taking responsibility for the messes they make. They constantly walk away from messes, completely oblivious to the chaos trailing behind.

Establishing good habits, especially neatness and everyone cleaning up after themselves, is my main focus right now. Comparing habit to a train track that enables our life to run smoothly, the educator Charlotte Mason wrote, "it rests with parents and teachers to lay down lines of habit on which the life of the child may run henceforth with little jolting or miscarriage, and may advance in the right direction with the minimum of effort" (Mason, Home Education, 119).

How I would love to have a household where the trains of all our lives can progress steadily along the track of good habits! I suspect that the problem is my inconsistency in demanding cleanup after every mess. Charlotte Mason explained how the failure to be perfectly consistent is the major pitfall mothers have in helping their children develop good habits. She wrote that sometimes a mother thinks a child should be rewarded after forming a habit, so she gives him "a little relaxation" without continuing to enforce it, "and then go on again. But it is not going on; it is beginning again, and beginning in the face of obstacles. The 'little relaxation' she allowed her child meant the forming of another contrary habit, which must be overcome before the child gets back to where he was before" (Mason 121).

My greatest failing may be that I not only grant my children a little relaxation, but myself as well. I need to set the example of cleanliness I want my children to follow, and it will only happen if I make a continual effort. Suzuki said, "You don't have to practice every day--only on the days you eat." Cleaning up needs to be practiced every day until it is as habitual as eating.

In the Suzuki Method, students develop a repertoire as they continue to review old pieces even as new ones are learned. Through repetition, learning continues. I think this relates to everything we learn, so this year, I hope to teach my family and myself at least one new habit each month, and then maintain it the next month as we begin a new one. Even though I'm not sure how far we can take this or how many habits we can develop and keep up, I'll continue trying.

It's embarassing to admit my faults. I almost feel like I should title this entry, "Confessions of a Messy Housewife" because I do struggle with such basic, mundane things. My habits for January have been to wash every dirty dish in the house before going to bed at night and to do all the laundry on Monday and Thursday. My children are learning, too, as Tommy did when he mopped up the chocolate under my supervision while the Mississippi Mud Pie baked in a new, one-piece pan. Now on day 24, I have plugged away at the dishes every night, even when I didn't want to, because of my conviction that even one lapse could make the track of habit I am laying get derailed. However, I will keep in mind if I do miss a day that repairs are always possible, that laying new track may be a step back, but it works.