CLEARING UP - Helen McClements

This morning I have had to clear a place at my kitchen table to write. Upstairs my husband has commandeered my desk with two computer monitors. That means that spread across two desks he has five computer screens, plus a small “Alexa show,” which apparently “gives him updates.” He tells me, that one day, when he manages to get an electrician, it will link to the heating and show us who’s at our door. I think he just wants more toys. He works from home now, so these are not fanciful computers and they do serve an actual purpose, (allegedly). In my non-technical head, I don’t know why he needs five monitors. I don’t understand. I probably never will.

Downstairs in the kitchen I have had to eject a particularly miffed and very hungry cat who took umbrage when I gave the dog her breakfast. The cat had eaten his breakfast but wanted another, a second breakfast, like a hungry hobbit in feline form. “Out you go until you can behave yourself,” I say as I open the door.

Back to the table. I set children’s school books to one side. I gather a pile of pencils, pens, and highlighters. Among them is a favorite lipstick. “That’s where you got to,” I say. There is a pile of bubble wrap I am saving for a friend who paints jars in pastel hues and needs packing material. There is a dish I want to place on Freecycle. There are two pairs of secateurs which are destined for the shed. Maybe one day soon they will reach the shed. There is a cornflake box which the older child has transformed onto a house. She has cut the front so it opens like a panel and inside there are two floors and she has colored in some furniture. There is a 3-D bed and sofa.  I am particularly taken with the 3-D mantelpiece. 

There is a large plastic bag full of corks. Once I put a bag of corks on Freecycle and a someone requested them. I dropped them at the door of her house near the park. She messaged later to thank me.

“What do you use them for?” I asked.

“Speech therapy,” she said.

I am reminded of the scene in The King’s Speech where Colin Firth, as the reluctant George VI, almost swallows a marble undergoing some sort of similar treatment. That was in the 1930s, I think. I had hoped methods had progressed. I think I will keep these corks for another purpose. I look around the table. 

There is a book on peace and reconciliation, written by a man I thought I knew but having read this, I now know on a different level. I lifted it to use a quotation, but I daren’t open it because once more I will be lost in its pages and an hour will be past and my deadline will remain unmet.

There isn’t much room for me and my writing. It’s hard not to be distracted. I wage a daily war on housework and clutter and mess. I rarely win any of these battles, with a fresh assault launched daily by the children and husband and pets. But what a wonderful war to lose. Years ago I lived alone, in a small two-up two-down house in East Belfast. These houses were built for the shipyard workers at the famous Harland and Wolff shipyard. The streets were narrow and cramped and alleys snaked up the back in lieu of gardens, and it was here we dragged out our bins on a Monday. 

The table there was often also cluttered because I am a messy person. But the mess was all mine, and there was no one to complain to about it and no one to blame. Some people Iive rich, interesting, generous single lives. I wasn’t one of these people. I needed, desperately, to be needed. Now I am needed. Sometimes I am needed too much. But what I need to do is look at the life among the shrapnel of the daily grind and be thankful. Be extremely thankful that this shrapnel is paper and cardboard and sadly, a fair amount of plastic. There is an overgrown garden to tend and the ever-increasing pile of laundry. There is a greyhound to walk and a pot of soup to make. In all of this is beauty and magic and joy. It’s time to see past the clutter and mess and treasure the life amid this gentle chaos. 

Helen McClements is a mother, writer and teacher from Belfast. She can often be heard on BBC Radio where she shares her musings on 'Thought for the Day'. In contrast to this, she writes a blog called www.Sourweeblog.com, where she unleashes her frustrations at juggling parenthood with work and the vagaries of life.