It's a Start

When I die, I want my epitaph to read, “She was half the woman her mother was.” It will be the greatest achievement of my life.

I like goals that include checklists. A lot of people do. For one, it means the goal is very likely achievable: finish the list, reach the goal. Two, everything in my life is condensed to lists. It’s the only way I get anything done.

The best lists are the ones that don’t have to be done in order. (Well, for most of us. For those of us with serious OCD, maybe not. Fortunately, my OCD does not tend that way.) That way, you can check off the easy things first and look like you’ve really accomplished a whole slew of tasks as you head towards your goal. And in my life right now, well…five minute tasks are great. It’s about all the time Ethan allots me before he’s neck deep in yet another thing he’s not supposed to be in.

So, I feel I have accomplished at least one task on the way to fulfilling my epitaph: a desk that is never clean.

Growing up, we teased my mom a lot about her desk. It’s a simple corner desk she’s had for at least as long as I can remember. Not very big, one drawer – very simple. And yet it is amazing how many things congregate on it. Like a super magnet drawing every piece of metal within 1,000 feet of it. Pictures that need to go in albums. Ink pens, pencils, markers – some that might work, other that probably don’t. Recipes to be laminated and filed. Letters to answer. Addresses to be put in the address book. Lists of birthday ideas, things to order, phone calls to make. And if you have something to give mom, her response is likely to be, “Just put it on my desk.” Very rarely did we see it clean.

The beautiful desk I got (and completely finished myself) for my 18^th birthday was rarely a bottomless pit. For one, it had more drawers to keep things in. Two, I hardly ever told someone to put something on it. And three, I had lots of time to keep it neat and clean so I could use it to write on. For 11½ years, I kept it that way. Then I left home and it has yet to find it’s way back into the place where I live. Someday. For I do love that desk.

But for a wedding gift, my grandfather gave me my heart’s desire: his rolltop desk. It’s huge. Eight deep drawers, a huge area to write on, a top to keep books on and I haven’t counted the cubby holes. And it has helped me check off one thing on my way to being half my mom: it’s a bottomless pit.

I try to give the thing I good cleaning at least once a month, but I swear more things congregate on it within the two days it takes me to go through the already existing piles than was there to start with. Letters to answer. Bills to pay. Emry’s school projects. Pens I don’t even know how they got into the house. Hairbows to make or fix. Magazines to read. Pictures to hang or put in albums. And I am continuously saying, “Just put it on my desk.”

So, I am well on my way in this lifetime long journey. I just don’t know that I’ll ever actually have a clean desk…