A Grown Up’s Guide To Life

Gloves and condoms: two things to never skip in the Grown Up’s Guide to Life. (Three kids under three, WAS a little nuts. They are fun, but it would have been nice to spread a few of them out.) That guideline is number three on the list. It follows the admonishment: Always read the instructions first. And after that, it reads: Instructions aren’t really just loose guidelines; they are there to pay attention to.

Yea, I about glued my hands and my wooden buttons together with tung oil this afternoon. I realized that it was a serious problem when I told my husband about it in our Facebook chat. Because he was at work, it was kind of a one sided conversation of me telling him about it: 

“…okay, buttons are drying... they mean it when they say to wear gloves... it's not a suggestion. Otherwise your hands stick to everything. Just a little fun fact there. Fortunately, I happen to know that baby oil helps remove hardened wax... and if that failed, hand sanitizer with alcohol in it removes pitch. My hands are not stuck to my pants or anything else (like my nose) at this point in time. I know you were worried.”

What he didn’t read was “OMG! My wedding ring is covered in this sticky stuff… is it ever going to come off?  I have to get yarn later; I could be one fuzzy handed lady!” I tried Simple Green and it didn’t work… took my ring off and stuck it in the cleaner before I had even tried the baby oil.

The instructions said to put a small amount of Tung Oil on a soft, lint free cloth and rub into the wood. For best results, apply a thin coat and work the tung oil into the wood surface, similar to the way that you wax a car. (Gotta love their detail there.) Always wear high quality rubber gloves such as (their preferred brand of gloves). This was to obtain their classic hand-rubbed beauty.

One thing that females in my family pride ourselves on is reading the instructions first. Those handy little facts don’t help when you decide to circumvent some of the instructions just for the sake of getting it done. I should know this by now, because growing up we had lessons in Redneck Git’R Done and Fixit (see examples A and B.) before being a redneck was cool and Wal-Mart started marketing the lifestyle.

Example A: Ladders Gorilla taped together! 

My mom bought a beautiful farm table when we first moved to Bend, it had three leaves and stretched out through the years to accommodate our family. When my dad built our new house, it didn’t fit in the dining room as well. So, he took the saw to it. Leaf by leaf, with every family addition, the table soon fit. My mom was always so mad that it never got finished again. Finally, years after, we all moved out and she had the chance to get a real dining set, I claimed it… after all of the times we’ve laughed about it… it was too good to give up. I have a small house and that thing can spread in any direction to give us enough room for friends and family. I always have dreams of making it perfect, but what would be the point?

Example B: The table that was sawed.

Life gets sticky sometimes and it feels like we’re clinging to the dream that it’s going to get better or bigger, sometime soon.  I critique my parenting on a level that seems unfair for anyone. I realized after talking with a friend the other day who struggled with the same issue, that we are creating little worlds with our kids. Their world is perfect from the beginning, because mom gives them what they need when they need it. The rest is shaped by new siblings, changes in their environment, and eventually, when they go to school. As I hung up the phone I heard my friend say, “Let’s go get your brothers.” That little kids’ world was being made whole in that small act. He had Mom and no matter what the morning included, when he went to get his brothers, his little world was made complete.  

Life is sticky, it can be hard, sometimes we scrub hard to make our mistakes disappear… but the truth is, even without all of that work, it is a whole and complete work in itself. Your love makes you work harder, judge yourself more critically than anyone else would. At the end of the day, your kids go to bed knowing how much you love them, how hard you work to create a family, because they are sleeping at peace with the security that only a family can bring. My dad is still a superhero with all of his redneck inventions. That table still brings joy to my house. It hosted game night last Friday night. Our family gathers around it and we all enjoy it. I still dream about the ways that I could, in my humanity, make it perfect; but it already is.

Reading the instructions only works so far, especially when you are dealing with different types of children. What works with one doesn’t work with the other. But what does stick is family. The panic to make everything perfect is always forefront in my mind. Perfection is already there, it started with that beautiful ring and the decision made to become the people we are today. I’d still recommend wearing gloves and rubbers! Especially if you are using tung oil!