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Little People Big Hoarders

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Every afternoon I drag my kids and their backpacks out of the car, and we come inside for a snack. As the girls eat, drink and talk with each other, I begin the arduous task of going through the piles of paper they bring home. I “oooo,” and “ahhh” in all the right places. We talk about how they could have done something better, and I set aside extra special achievements for my husband to look at when he comes home, and then I wait.

I wait for the girls to finish their snack, and leave the room before hurrying to the trash can. I dig down underneath whatever refuse lies on top and start stuffing sheets in the trash. I am a horrible person, I think. What is wrong with me? What type of mother throws away her child’s preschool and kindergarten work? And if I feel guilty about it, doesn’t that mean it’s wrong?

I hear footsteps and drop the lid to the trash can, panicked. I hurry back to my perch in the corner of the kitchen and casually lean against the counter as my 4-year-old walks into the room eyeing me suspiciously.

“Hey, Emma… what, um, what are you doing?” I ask nervously.

“I’m just frowing my trash away,” she holds up an empty yogurt container.

“Oh, I’ll do that for you,” I snatch her garbage out of her hand and quickly throw it in the trash before she can see in the can.

She eyes me warily as she backs out of the room. I smile widely and wave before collapsing on the counter as the adrenaline wears off. That was close.

I began chopping onions to start cooking dinner when I heard it.

“Momma,” Aubrey, my 6-year-old wailed, “Who threw my work away?”

Uh oh.

“Um… I don’t know honey. It must have been an accident.”

Aubrey digs her papers out, spilling onion skins onto the floor. “I worked so hard on this Momma! You have to keep it.”

While she stacks her food-stained papers on the counter, I feebly try to explain to her that I can’t keep everything she brings home. We simply don’t have room for it all.

“Aubrey, if I kept it all we wouldn’t be able to walk through our house. There would be stacks, and stacks and stacks of papers everywhere. It’s like this show on T.V. called ‘Hoarders.’ The people on the show don’t throw anything away and their houses are disgusting. There is trash and bugs everywhere and they have to have somebody come to their house to clean it out and take away truck loads of garbage just so they can live in it.”

Aubrey’s mouth fell open as I talked.

“And I don’t throw it all away. I keep the extra special stuff you make,” I said, pulling out a new pink file box full of all the things I couldn’t stand to see buried under onion peels and carrot shavings. Aubrey and Emma each have a box full of finger-paintings, handprints and pages with their name written clearly for the first time. Sadie, my preschool drop-out, is only two years old, but her box holds mementos of her dark and stormy past: disciplinary slips from preschool for biting.

It has become easier since “my talk” with Aubrey to throw away extraneous paper work she brings home, but it wasn’t until Sister Wife (my best friend with whom I share everything but clothes and husbands) posted on Facebook that I realized I wasn’t alone. Wifey had had “the talk” with her son and explained to him that unless they wanted to be on “Hoarders” they had to let some things go. Comments poured in, one Greenwood, Miss. mother wrote that her son won’t let her throw anything away, “He is so offended if he sees it in the garbage. So I pile it up, save it for after bedtime and walk it all to the alley.”

As it began to dawn on me that I wasn’t alone, my shame begin to lift and I realized I was probably sitting on The Learning Channel’s next hit reality show, “Little People Big Hoarders.” I could see it in my mind. Houses stacked floor to ceiling with alphabet sheets and corn dog sticks. Nervous parents darting down darkened alleyways digging through trash cans whilst repeatedly looking over their shoulders, praying their children don’t catch me.

I could see myself sitting on a couch, talking directly to the camera, “I don’t know how we ended up here, I’m just glad there is someone who can help me.”

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Thank YOU!

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As Halloween’s high fructose corn syrup high has faded, the leaves have turned brilliant shades of orange and yellow. They swirl off the trees in my yard making a damp carpet for my children to fall on as they play and remind me that another year is coming to a close.

There are so many things to be thankful for this year; I’m overwhelmed at where to begin. I am beyond thankful that the most serious problem I’ve faced in the last week was arranging for the burial of multiple goldfish, although I did learn that the death of a goldfish is quite a serious matter to some.

I find it hard to believe that I’ve been in my new home in Greenwood, Mississippi, for less than a year, it seems more like ten. Moving to Smalltown, USA has been above and beyond what my husband and I thought it would be, and after growing up in Jasper, Ala. we had pretty high expectations. We’ve been so fortunate over the last twelve years. We have lived in some of the friendliest cities in the country: Savannah, Ga. Mount Pleasant, S.C., Fort Worth, Tx., Auburn, Ala. Moving as often as we have could have been a difficult thing, but it’s proven to be one of my life’s greatest blessings.

This year I am thankful for the friends I’ve made, for the people who have challenged me and made my life better, for the people, in all of these cities who welcomed me with open arms and helped me to make their city my temporary home. I’m grateful for the group of women who are in my life now; women who make me laugh until I cry and who pull me through life when I can’t make it on my own.

Among the blessings I hold closest to my heart: my family, my friends and you, my reader. I’m thankful for your acceptance of the real me. The me that is flawed, quirky and occasionally (fine, always) overshares. The me that works out until she can’t get out of bed then runs through a drive-through for lunch, the me that chases her baby around the country club swimming pool then falls in head first, the me who loves her family desperately but gets motherhood wrong a million ways every day. Thank you for laughing with me, encouraging me and actually taking the time to read what I write.

This Thanksgiving as I sit down with my family and give thanks, my prayer will be simple. Lord, thank you for so many places to call home and so many friends to call family.


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Ding Dong The Fish Are Dead

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Save your hate mail haters: a reader in Greenwood, Mississippi is on top of things.

I am not an animal person. As a child all of my pets had short life spans, I can’t think of a single pet that survived for over a year. As an adult and a mother I’ve never been one to get the “warm and fuzzies” over animals of any kind, and I haven’t felt the need to take on the responsibility of feeding and picking up after another living being. It’s all I can do to take care of the three children and husband that God, with his wonderful sense of humor, has seen fit to trust me with.

So I was beyond surprised when my oldest daughter, Aubrey, came home with “Kate”, a goldfish she won at school last week. She was thrilled, and I tried to put on my happy face as we loaded up and headed to the store to get a fish bowl and food.

But I was apprehensive, there have been many lives lost in the O’Bryant’s quest to becoming pet owners: Blitzen the Power’s family beta fish, for which Emma was convicted of involuntary fish slaughter (go to www.moultrienews.com/family for Blitzen’s full obituary) and the cat we inherited when our next door neighbors moved. Jevan-Samantha-Jennifer-Alexis-Hayley-Snead, who disappeared without a trace shortly after my husband taught Aubrey to shoot a BB gun and following the unexplained disappearance of a baby bird that had been rescued by some well-meaning, but totally unrealistic, member of my family.

In the wake of all the animals that have lost their lives before Kate, I tried to mentally prepare my children for her inevitable death, before we had even purchased her first meal. I explained to the girls that fish didn’t usually live very long and they didn’t need to be sad when she died, because truth be told Kate was going to be lucky to make it through the night.

Kate did survive that first night and when the girls walked into the kitchen the next morning they began dancing and chanting, “She’s alive! She’s alive!”

I got a little cocky. I was a real pet owner now. I had officially been in charge of a non-human life form for over 24 hours and it had lived. When my middle daughter, Emma, expressed a desire for a fish to call her own, I didn’t hesitate. I splurged the 32 cents and dumped another fish in the bowl.

For exactly three days my daughters spent every waking second staring wide-eyed into the fish bowl. It seemed they understood that there was no promise of tomorrow and they wanted to enjoy every second possible with their fishy friends– carpe diem or something like that. (Pun intended, of course.)

Until the expected happened, on Sunday morning before I had even gotten out of the bed, I received the news: ding dong the fish were dead. Kate and her adopted sister, Bea Jeni, had passed, gone on to that great fishbowl in the sky to join the throngs of O’Bryant pets who are gathered there, disgruntled I’m sure.

I was relieved that this particular bout of pet-itis was over, until my husband told me he was going to run to the store before church to pick up a couple of more fish. It’s a fishous cycle and it had to be stopped.

I warned my kids as they loaded into the car to pick their next victims, er, fish, “This is the last time! Do you hear me? No fish deserves to live like this! We’re not just going to keep replacing them!” I yelled as they drove away.

I went through the motions of getting everyone ready for church as my husband, Zeb, returned from his errand and acclimated the fish to its new home. Zeb read off of his store ticket, “Did you know you can get a new fish within 90 days if you keep your receipt?”

I rolled my eyes. Just what this family needs, I thought, an unlimited supply of fish.

We were about to walk out the door when I glanced at the fish bowl and saw it. There was no mistaking it. One of our new fish was already floating belly up in the bowl. In case you’ve lost count, that’s three fishy deaths in less than three hours.

Emma grabbed the net, scooped up her fish and marched to the toilet as Zeb chimed in, “At least I kept my receipt.”

***SERIOUSLY, Don’t send me hate mail over this. I will delete it without reading. I’m not raising serial killers over here we just don’t have good luck with pets. ALSO you might refer to THIS COLUMN where I explain my whole point of doing what I do. If you still don’t get it, I can’t help you.