Cleaning up...

I have finally cleaned out my home office, something I have been threatening to do since June. I brought home a lot of stuff from work this year, and I think I have just been avoiding going through all of it. I guess I'm over it now, because I woke with an intense motivation to just get it done, and I did, and I'm glad.

I enlisted Jay to help a bit, for a small fee of course. The office has a door that goes out to the backyard. We hardly ever use it, but it is nice to work in here and have the door open, so I wanted to clean it and Jay helped and was it filthy!

"This door can used some of that Oxy clean, huh, mom?"

Yea, that and a blow torch, I thought.

"Too bad that guy died. The news said he took drugs, is that true?"

"I don't know, babe, I guess the doctors think that's what happened."

"Mom, why do people take drugs?"

Oh, boy. Why do kids pick these moments to ask life's most profound questions. My head is totally into cleaning this room, and not anywhere near where it should be for this discussion. I'm pretty sure this talk takes place in front of a roaring fire while wearing cable knit sweaters and involves some pamphlets or something.

"I think people take drugs to be more of what they want to be instead of just being who they are."

(did that even make any sense?)

"Oh, so that guy took those drugs to have a louder voice?"

I know it's much more complicated than this, but I thought this quite metaphorical, and age an age appropriate reason and response. So I went with it and said...

"Yes, exactly."

"Wow, could you imagine how loud his voice would have been if the drugs actually worked and not killed him? He really would have cleaned up!"

So true, I thought.

It's a hard lesson to learn to just be who we are without wanting to be better, bigger, more beautiful, and louder isn't it? Especially living in a world where every image has been digitized, enhanced and perfected.