Oh, my goodness…………they are back from university and don’t I know it!! I got one back on time and the other three days late due to the industrial action on the railways…..but they are here.
This post is for all those Mums out there whose worlds, and houses, have been turned upside down, quite literally.
You don’t realise how much you get used to having a nice quiet, tidy house with just yourself to look after…….it just becomes the norm. I miss them so much though and go into overdrive just before they come home, and I know speaking to friends that the same happens to them. I can only describe it as ‘nesting’ behaviour. If you look in the dictionary the definition of nesting instinct, which all women have apparently and is not irrational but a behaviour stemming from our evolutionary past, is the burst of energy women often get in the last few weeks of pregnancy that leads them to clean and organise the house in preparation for baby’s arrival. The only issue is that I still get it every time they return from university for the holidays! This urge to tidy and have everything just right for them.
The bedding is washed, rooms tidied, welcome box of beer in place, Percy pig sweets (their favourites from when they were little) and a chocolate bear nestled in a Christmas stocking hung on their bedroom doors! It’s like a bit of a “Welcome home, I’m so glad to see you!”
That nice fuzzy feeling soon wears off though, because holy s**t I’ve got up this morning and I thought we’d had intruders and been robbed in the night. It’s taken the grand total of 24 hours to turn from the above to this! How do they do it!?!? I don’t think I could make such a mess if I just stood there tossing things around the room for 24 hours. You can’t even walk from one side of the room to the other……….both rooms!! This, added to the fact that one of them has announced he’s not here for two weeks, but possibly five! FIVE whole weeks…………….oh my days!!
So, what did I do…….well, not what I would have done a year ago. A year ago, I would have had a mini meltdown and we would have fallen out. But there would only be me getting wound up, they just stand there looking at you as if you’ve got two heads and are behaving irrationally. Not any more though. When I went on my Camino in the summer one of the learnings I brought back was the knowledge of what was truly important. I decided it was love, friendship, shelter and food. Anything else is not as important. I was spending too much time worrying about stuff that really in the grand scheme of things did not matter. I decided the new me was not going to ‘sweat the small stuff’ any more.
There are terrible things happening all over the world; wars, people without food, people without homes, children without love………..so in the grand scheme of things, the apocalypse occurring in my two bedrooms, I have decided is not that great an issue. It’s not me that’s got to live in it for five weeks. I’ve not got to find my clothes in the pile on the floor and I’ve not got to negotiate a way to get into my bed. So, I’ve casually turned around, closed the door and left them to it. I will make a judgement at the end of January as to whether I need a hazmat suit to enter and clear the aftermath when they’ve gone back or whether just rubber gloves will do.
Instead of sweating about the small stuff at the start of my Christmas holiday I’ve been out for a little run, done some baking, read my book, done my Italian and Spanish homework and had a lovely day! I’ve also been shopping and stocked up the fridge which reveals my other Christmas ‘students at home’ coping mechanism.
There are all my healthy proteins on the second shelf down, eggs and low-fat meat, next shelf down are the 0% fat yoghurts. In the bottom tray loads of fresh vegetables, the fridge of someone who likes to eat quite healthily. Then what’s that that can be spied on the shelf above the vegetables?!?!?………all those little blue cans………the secret’s out……..it’s the tonic for my gin! If you drink gin, you stop worrying about the mess in the bedroom, and if you drink enough you get to a point where you can’t even see it.
So, if your student quite literally turns your world upside down when they return for Christmas, my advice would be; don’t sweat the small stuff, just close the door, and drink gin! Cheers and Merry Christmas to all those Mums with an untidy student or two!
