My name is Emily and I have a Rolodex.
If that causes you to conjure images of an insanely expensive watch worn by celebrities, then you'll be disappointed when I tell you that you are thinking of a Rolex. I'm talking about a rotary file, an office accessory.
I have a Rolodex.
My Rolodex is one of the deluxe models. I got it for free because --flipping my hair for effect-- I used to design for a company called Sanford and helped design on the Rolodex team. I'm sure I just went up a notch in your estimation. Autographs later, please.
In any case, my deluxe Rolodex has the wheels on the side for whirling about my world of contact information. With a flip of my wrist, I can summon specialists, recall my library information and call my favorite flooring company. The cards flip magically around the rotary file as I watch the alphabet pass by dizzily. I can see the entire alphabet is 3 seconds flat. It's fun AND functional. It's FUNctional. (Oh c'mon... laugh.)
I'm not the only one who thinks the Rolodex is fun. My preschool daughter is quite taken with it. In a manner of minutes she discovered most of the features of the Rolodex.
She likes how the cards flip around and around, piling on top of each other. She delights in taking out the special Rolodex punched cards and shoving them into new parts of the alphabet or, more creatively, jamming them in the back of the file. In a final climax of creativity, a family of glitter stickers has appeared now and again in various parts of the Rolodex alphabet. I find myself smiling while I see a happy bear sticker appear in the "R" section and groaning as I realize that the "G" section has disappeared altogether.
My Rolodex is a micro example of what my home is like.
To keep things orderly, I have managed to acquire vast amounts of plastic tubs and all manner of organizing paraphernalia. I close my eyes when the Container Store catalog comes in the mail because, quite honestly, I'm afraid I'll become OCD and start organizing on a sub particle level. Organizing makes me feel like I have control over some part of my world. It's false security but I treasure it just the same.
Enter young children.
My children do not share my admiration of orderliness. In fact, I have been doing an unofficial study and I can tell you that children are 99% more likely to play with toys if they are put away in bins. If toys are strewn upon a floor, children are less likely to be interested in them. Moth, meet flame. The children prefer the toys that are put away so that they can "un-put" them away. The irony.
But as I reflect on my home/Rolodex parallel, I realize that without my little muffins running around wrecklessly in their galoshes and my high heels, I wouldn't have the bling, the glitter stickers.
I wouldn't have the fierce squeezes known as hugs.
I wouldn't have the compliments. "I wike your neckwace."
I wouldn't have that extra something that makes me see the world 100% differently than I did 8 years ago, pre-children.
My 8 year old daughter will take a pack of markers and attack a white sheet of paper with great confidence. She will turn a blank canvas into art in 5 minutes flat and hang it on our art board. She inspires me to stop fretting, love life and just DIG IN! (As an aside, when I'm working on a design for something and get hung up on a part of it, I'll ask Morgan what she would do. Her ideas are always fresher.)
Eve will be 3 in one month. She belts out songs unabashedly. Sometimes when we're home along I'll sing a silly opera version of her Veggie Tales song and we'll dance. We hold hands and say "Shimmy, shimmy" as we push and pull each other's arms. She's pure life.
Some days I don't have this perspective. On those dark days I feel frustrated and want to scrap the whole thing. Nothing ever really feels done but then when I worked in the corporate world nothing ever really felt done there either. (Am I right?)
On those days, I take a deep breath, return the "G" to my Rolodex file and replace the jammed cards. With a new perspective I realize that I don't need a new Rolodex; I need more glitter stickers.
