The Home Economics teacher

My wife’s run-in with a former teacher as she tells our children:

Thursday July 23rd 2009—Home Economics Teacher
I went to a different Jazzercise class this day. In walked a woman I recognized. When I thought about it, I realized she was my 6th grade Home Economics teacher. I said to her, “I never did finish my pillow!” She began to laugh and was thrilled an old student had recognized and remembered her. After class, she said she wanted to tell me something. She said that when I was her student, her 16 year old daughter was having kidney failure and was frequently in the hospital. On occasion, she would leave the emergency room in the morning, change clothes and then go to work and teach us. Her daughter later died. She said, “When my daughters were little, if I had known then what I know now, I would have enjoyed the little things with them…walking barefoot in the park and eating chocolate ice cream.” We want to spend more time with you, but we are always stressed out about making ends meet, cleaning up, doing laundry, weeds growing in the backyard, etc. I realize that there will always be “work,” but how much of the work that I do taking care of a 2700sq foot house is meaningless?

Meaning is not what we were searching for and is not what we have found in this endeavor.  We know the meaning we have in life and we are quite secure in it.  Nevertheless, I feel many people who feel they have life figured out continue their meaningless activities without stopping and considering why.  Why are you taking your children to an activity, why are you involved with a certain organization, why do you clean your house or even why do you get out of bed in the morning?

If we kept running around without considering why and reprioritizing our lives, we were soon to be out of control.  A family, like many others, in a tailspin, out of control and soon to disappear into nothing.  Instead, we decided to take drastic measures to change our course.  We could have easily changed a few things in our life and ended up with a wonderful result, but we wanted this to be profound.  We wanted our children to look back at this change and know this was the day that changed their lives forever.  It was the moment we assigned meaning to every moment of our lives.

We purposely sought to reduce the time spent cleaning, washing and organizing.  It becomes easy to just neglect those areas, but what if you could nearly eliminate them.  Our number of clothes would be reduced, our possessions would be limited, our kitchen would be streamlined and the space we call home would be reduced tenfold!  Clothes, toys and things take up less space.  Cleaning takes less time.  More importantly, we have time and emotional freedom to enjoy our family and focus on what it means to be a parent, a spouse or….