Shabby Sweet

Part of my ongoing project of coming to terms with my family's limitations is to embrace our beat-up house.

My home once lacked carpet poop stains, shredded furniture, and literal holes in the walls. In days past it felt pretty clean and fairly attractive.

But my children came in like a wrecking ball.

I told Dutch that we should re-envision the entire house as mid-century modern: spare furnishings, purposeful simplicity, relative emptiness.  Just nothing, anywhere.

The problem with new (read: pricey) clean-lined furniture lies in it's rapid initiation by the wrecking crew.

So we sit on dining chairs whose farmhouse thatched seats have been picked ragged and now sport large gaps and views of the floor. We ignore the spots on the rug and on the drapes. We decide we don't care too awfully much about the hammered paint on the banged-up walls, or the bathroom sink drains whose stoppers have all been pulled out and lost by the nine-year-old.

We just can't. Because if we did, we would be in a permanent state of disappointment.

Trashed house = part of the deal with two sensory-seeking, unintentionally destructive boys with special needs.

Last night as we ordered sweets at the Kneaders bakery counter, I gestured to the display of lovely home accessories behind us and said to Dutch, "Look at these beautiful things Jack would love throw off the deck."

Being honest about what happens to pretty things in our house is one of the steps of my self-imposed twelve-step program. Some of the other steps: banish Pinterest (done and done), avoid purchasing lamps (or, Things Made for Dragging Around by Their Cords), and ultimately stop giving a shiz about what visitors might think of our shabbiness.

Another of the invented 12 steps: context. The reality remains that my beleaguered home could be considered a bastion of beauty and excess in terms of the living standards of much of the world's population.

So I'm one of the lucky ones. I have special boys who live in a raggedy, comfy house with a family that is special by association.

Such luxury.