Handprints

Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small
And always leave my fingerprints
On furniture and walls

But every day I'm growing --
I'll be grown some day
And all those tiny handprints
Will surely fade away

So here's a little handprint
Just so you can recall
Exactly how my fingers looked
When I was very small

When the kids were little and in daycare I got two or three of these a year, written in curvy script on colored paper with carefully inked handprints. Every time I wanted to cry because there was nothing further from the truth about what I felt.

Back in my academic days, I presented a number of papers about the concept of domesticity and its influence on American residential design. (summary: it's all Ruskin's fault, although Jefferson didn't help much.) My mother-in-law usually came up to help the Husband keep up with things while I was gone. One time after I came home, she inquired about the topic, and then asked, incredulous, what I actually knew about domesticity. A lot of theory, I guess. was the answer. Not much practicality.

That was the easiest thing to say, but not entirely true. When I really clean a countertop, it is shiny and sterile. I can bleach a bathtub with the best, and the saucepans we received as wedding gifts still gleam like new.

Here is the truth: I didn't wait so long to reproduce so I could have a clean house all the time. Marinara sauce handprints stain the white door to the kitchen right now: frankly, I'm smiling wistfully, remembering the smaller ones slightly lower in years passed. Buttery finger smears streak the glass egg-shaped table where we eat most of our meals. It all washes away when the need arises. Fussing, nagging, and complaining doesn't.

I finally decided to cut the little hands free of the offending verse and stuck the sheets of bright paper in scrapbooks to be pasted in place later--probably when they're grown. The poem I joyfully round-filed. Life is too short to ever see it again.