Years ago, back before I had children and worked at a job where I had summers off, my mom had a knee replacement. Each day I would pack a little lunch and head to the hospital to visit with her and aide in her recovery. After she mastered walking up and down the hallway, she had to try stairs. We slowly walked to the Physical Therapy room where a wooden stairway to nowhere and everywhere all at the same time awaited her arrival. I watched her stand and the bottom of these four or five steps and stare them down. The Physical Therapist who was very kind but had no sympathy (knowing her job was to get my mom moving) said something I will never forget. Now not everyone can hear advice from a PT and apply it to life, but that day, it certainly stuck. “Up with the good, down with the bad.” In her practical application she literally meant that-the least painful and safest route- go up the stairs with your good leg, down with your bad.
Recently after a particularly long day of something I call “adulting”, those words resurfaced in my mind. It is important to note that I am not someone who is a pessimist or an optimist- I am more of a “centerist” where I feel the pull of both sides often. It was one of those days where the demands on my energy was more than I could fill. Where the moods of my children ranged from joy filled acrobats to devastated, shriveled raisins. My husband was overwhelmed with work, the house literally looked like a thousand band groupies had held some after party, and the dogs had fleas- lots of them. The kids were somewhere between laughing and crying, the husband was somewhere between being incredibly busy and needing stillness, and the dogs were scratching, itching, scratching. And I had given up on the house- like thinking that maybe renting an industrial sized dumpster would be the only option.
“Up with the good and down with the bad.” “Up with the good and down with the bad.” The genius of this statement echoed like it it been whispered from a toga wearing philosopher in my ears.
I remembered that my responsibility in loving my husband is to hear his feelings but not to offer solutions other than listening. I remembered that my kids are certainly entitled to experience a huge range of feelings and my job is to hold them but again not solve them. I cleaned up a few things and delegated the rest. And I didn’t feel guilty about that. (they are in fact not my Lego) And the dogs? They just needed a bath.
I put the bad down. I put the overwhelmed down. I put the feeling of needing to do it all at once down. I picked up some self care. I picked up some take out. I picked up some honesty- not needing to reconcile my inability to do everything I thought I needed to do with my amount of energy- and instead got real about what was actually fair to expect of myself.
We are not all recovering but we are all climbing stairs of some sort. Now and then those stairs are steep, long, never ending. Sometimes there is a handrail and sometimes we have to rely on our own steam to get there but “up with the good and down with the bad” will make that climb a little less painful.
They Homeschool 