Remember?

the plastic runners on Grandma Monica's orange carpet. Not a spot or a dot could fall through those runners on her wall to wall orange carpet.
We walked in the door, gave kisses and hugs and crunch, crunch walked or trudged, as the case was usually to the semi-circular couch to watch the adults talk and socialize. "Don't move not!" "Don't break the..." If we would've touched it it would have been broken. She was a keeper of stuff and we enjoyed looking at her well kept stuff, that was half of the fun of going over there.
Keeping my relationships with my children has to uncover the plastic, I think... I am tempted to put plastic over myself and not show the real me to the children. I am tempted to be fake with them and not get spots on myself from interaction with them. I gotta get down and dirty with them. I gotta enter into the thrill of the age that they are. Sleeping under the pretend tent is way over me, or under me.
I have to find a way to be me and survive and still interact with them.
I am trying to keep my carpets and my family. I do like the beauty and fresh feeling of perfectly vaccuumed carpets. When we moved in the carpets had perfect triangles from corner to corner and every Saturday I try to recreate my triangles by vaccuuming from stem to stern as much as time allows. But they are certainly not spotless and I am always working on them from the trudging of evergrowing feet.
No plastic, just work.