Organized.

This has been the mantra ruling my every free second since sometime last year. Getting the clothes organized, the closets organized, the finances organized. Organizing the grocery list, the library books, the social calendar, the traveling details. Saving receipts, clipping coupons, sending out bills.

Always in front of me there is this vision of my life completely organized. I sit at my cleared off kitchen table, drinking home-brewed iced tea, wearing clothes that fit well on the body I got from working out every day while my kids take synchronized naps, while the healthy made-from-scratch dinner bakes in the oven. All the projects are done, every inch of the house painted, swept, disinfected, steam-cleaned, pressed. I type the correct number of words allotted for that day, moving forward in a perfectly straight line toward the ultimate goal of my completed book.

I never spend more than I have to, I never waste time with indecision, never turn back once I've gone down a road, because I always choose the right road the first time. My hair is cut and my nails are polished and I remember everything I'm supposed to do this weekend.

Then the vision fades, and I am appalled by this person living in my house, this flighty, unfocused person who wanders the apartment retrieving socks and scribbling lines of plot onto old envelopes. The person who changes main characters and voice mid-novel. The person who, after feeling nauseous and tired for a couple of days, begins to agonize over the dreaded possibility of an unlooked-for pregnancy, and then, in the same day prays sincerely but futilely for the second line to appear, because salvation lies in the second line. She goes to the store in desperate need and then wanders around trying to remember why she came.

This person is unrecognizable to me, because inside I am a little girl who went to fairs and guessed the number of marbles in the jar, and put my name in hats, and never worried that I wouldn't win - such a thought was inconceivable! I always won. I believed in my own worthiness the way I believed in the infallibility of my family, the way I am tempted now to view the perfection of my children.

I am, in short, so disorganized that I'm not sure now whether the Good Things are a result of some hidden wealth of potential, or that self-centered, entitled bravado, or, most likely, the gifts of a benevolent God who pities my naivety. It is said, God won't give you more than you can handle, and I must be weak indeed for the charmed life I've led.

At the end of the year now, as I make lists and check off boxes and count the cutlery, I am determined to put aside these things sometimes, to stop and think about something deeper, more mysterious than the perfection I crave.

My friend died recently, an old friend. She did not go to the gym; she didn't wear makeup. The wallpaper in her hallway was torn and only some of her children are doctors and professors, only some are married :) She had things in order. Before she got sick, I decided to let go of some of the clutter, ever pursuing that simplified life. I threw out close to 27 birthday cards from this friend. Year after year, she'd taken the time to send me a card. Sometimes she wrote out a verse in her neat little script, sometimes a five or ten dollar bill would fall from the card, neatly folded in two by her honest hands. She never flattered, but sincerely encouraged, using all she had she pushed grace and kindness outward and it rained down on everyone she knew.

I know when I think of my friend, that no amount of planning and working can make me into a woman like her. There is no time to wait until all the dishes are done to develop spiritually. I know I need to invite others into my home even if my ego won't be stroked by them complimenting it. I know I need to go to parties and showers and dinners even though I feel like hiding my disorganized self away in the dark. It is time, my friends, to get the priorities straight.