Throw Pillows

Stop jumping on the throw pillows!” I turn and yell from the kitchen, hands pruny and sudsy from doing dishes, splattering drips of water on the floor. The two children in the living room ignore me, quickly piling pillows in a beige and orange and turquoise tower between couch and coffee table. The youngest crouches on his toes, four years of boy limbs in a ball of quivering energy, and leaps. His gleeful hollers reverberate in my head as he becomes a panther and pounces onto the pile. I cringe, watching as he topples the pile of pillows.

“My turn!” shouts the next child, long brown hair falling in her face as she scoops pillows back together. The younger scrambles out of her way and I scowl as she takes her turn. “What have I told you about jumping on the pillows?” I shout, teeth clenched, “But it’s fun!” they grin at me with wide, hopeful smiles, hair askew and cheeks pink from exertion. “No!” I wipe my still dripping hands with a towel and march over to yank the back door open. “If you want to be crazy, go outside,” I command. Smiles fading, the children trudge out the back door. Grumbling, I pick the pillows up off the floor, one by one, and place them in their assigned spots. I notice the tear in a beige pillow and set it strategically in a corner. The permanent marker on an orange pillow faces the back of the couch. I place the unblemished ones in front, breathing a sigh of relief when order is returned. Now I can do the dishes in peace. **** I’ve always been an orderly, organized person. “Everything has a place, and everything in its place,” as my grandfather, then later my mother, used to say. The phrase planted itself in my heart, and I translated it to mean that orderliness equates tranquility, that I can only have peace when nothing is out of place. When I was younger I had a Barbie house, a present from my grandmother as a place to play with my dolls. Two bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen and living room downstairs. Plenty of room for Barbie and her friends to walk around and play. It claimed a special spot on my bedroom floor. Yet, I never did get the hang of playing with dolls. I didn’t like to conjure conversations or move them to speak with one another. Instead, I prefered to organize them. I set up vignettes in that Barbie house, couch arranged over here, Barbie reclining just so, dressed in her outfit of the day. Her little sister sat nearby, reading a book or brushing the dog. The table was set prettily for dinner, always. Tiny food on tiny plates, laid out exactly where I wanted it. Everything was as it should be, and there it would stay until I decided the scene needed to change. In college, despite sharing a tiny dorm room, I maintained control over my side of the room. My bookshelves were artfully arranged with color coded notebooks and folders to match the textbooks. Green for science, red for reading, with coordinating pencils and pens. I made my bed every morning, blanket folded in a perfect rectangle at the foot. Luckily, my roommate was every bit as organized as I was, and I don’t mean to brag, but we frequently won the clean room award when inspections came around. Despite the stresses of late-night studying, being away from home, and navigating new relationships, I felt better, lighter, when I went to my room and put everything in its place. As an adult, decorative pillows are a symbol of my control. What better way to show how sophisticated and peaceful my life is than turquoise and orange throw pillows that perfectly match the stripes in the curtains which go so well with the colorful pattern of the rug. I have throw pillows piled in the sitting room, soft and fluffy, smooth and cool, sitting in their spots on the couches. I have them on my bed, perfectly placed on my side and my husband’s side. They are in the children’s rooms, neatly on comforters, drawing my eye up away from the toys scattered on the floor and up to the order I try to maintain for my own sanity. ***** The dishes are done and I’m wiping the countertops when my daughter opens the back door and steps in, shaking off leaves and dirt from the yard. My son follows on her heels. “Mommy, we were swinging and jumping off to see how far we could go!” My son tells me. “I jumped this far!” He says, holding his arms wide. “That sounds fun!” I smile. I place the sponge on the sink where it goes and survey my work, thinking of what I want to organize next. “Can we build a fort?” my daughter asks, interrupting my train of thought. “Yeah, we want to build a fort!” my son chimes in, jumping up and down. “Go for it,” I say. “But don’t touch my pillows,” I give them a half-hearted glare. “Okay!” they respond. I watch as they move the chairs out from the dining table and into a row. My daughter slides the piano bench out while my son grunts as he scoots the heavy coffee table across the floor. I cringe as my nicely arranged room is disassembled, but I control my impulse to push the furniture back into place and instead stand off to the side and observe their progress. They run upstairs to grab blankets, throwing them over the stair railing to land in a heap on the floor. The chairs and bench and table are soon covered in Frozen and Batman blankets, the room transformed into a series of tunnels and forts. Little heads poke in and out, giggling and playing. Dolls and stuffed animals come downstairs, somehow a card game is set up under the blankets. My heart swells as I watch the two of them play together, creating their own imaginary world and organizing it how they like. They arrange and negotiate and set things in their places, putting order to chaos, creating harmony. With young children, I realize peace isn’t something I can display and put perfectly in its place. It’s not having control over outward objects or making sure everything stays exactly where I put it. Sometimes peace can be messy, with furniture all over the place and my sitting room covered in blankets. The smiles and giggles of my children remind me that I can let go of some order and move things around. That my heart can still be happy if everything is not in its place. But, lest you think I’ve become a new person, let me remind you that my throw pillows are still off limits, a compromise of sorts between my old life and this new one of motherhood.