I measure my days in discarded garments and forgotten water bottles. Each one a breadcrumb trail of my daughters’ whirlwind existence through our home.
The thing about raising children is that you’re constantly cleaning up their messes while simultaneously trying to teach them not to make messes in the first place. It’s a peculiar dance, this balance between enabling and educating. Between letting them fail and watching them soar.
Today, I found myself delivering another impassioned speech about responsibility, sparked by a breakfast dish left to fossilize on the coffee table. My 13-year-old rolled her eyes so hard I worried they might get stuck that way (as my mother always warned). My 10-year-old, still young enough to be swayed by dad’s wisdom, nodded seriously while dropping her jacket exactly where she stood.
It’s not really about the socks or the dishes or the trail of school supplies that somehow migrate to every surface except their desks. It’s about the invisible imprints we leave behind. The footprints we don’t see until years later.
I dream of my daughters in their future workplaces, being the ones who refill the coffee pot after taking the last cup. In their future relationships, being the ones who ask “how was your day?” and actually listen. In their future homes, creating spaces that welcome rather than walls that divide.
Sometimes, in between the sighs and the lectures and the endless picking up of things that apparently cannot pick themselves up, I catch glimpses of who they’re becoming. My teenager holding the door for a stranger at a store. My youngest consoling a friend through a difficult day. These moments flash like lightning – brief but brilliant – illuminating the path from who they are to who they’ll be.
We’re all just passing through this world, leaving our mark. I’m trying to teach them that these marks should be intentional, should be improvements rather than scars. Should be light rather than a shadow.
Though I suspect my daughters think I’m obsessed with cleanliness (I’m not) or orderliness (debatable) or making their lives unnecessarily complicated (jury’s still out), what I’m really obsessed with is their future. With the people they’re becoming. With the spaces they’ll occupy and the lives they’ll touch.
For now, I’ll keep picking up socks. Keep delivering speeches to rolling eyes. Keep pointing out the beauty of responsibility and the grace of leaving things better than you found them.
Because one day, they won’t be leaving socks on my floor anymore. They’ll be walking their own paths, creating their own spaces, making their own marks on the world.
And I hope – I pray – that when that day comes, they’ll remember the lessons hidden in all those picked-up socks and rescued water bottles. That they’ll understand it was never really about the cleaning.
It was always about the becoming.