As I'm sure is true of many of us who are parents of adult children, sometimes I think back to when my kiddos were young and wish I would have done some things differently. For the most part, I think I was an okay mom ... at least I tried to be anyway ... but there are definitely some things I wouldn't mind having a do-over on. Some of the things I was so adamant about back then were just ... well ... stupid things that in the grand scheme of things weren't nearly as important as I thought they were. I wish I would have spent a heck of a lot more time listening to my kids ... really, really listening to my children ... more time playing with my children ... more time reading with my children ... instead of worrying about whether or not the house was clean. Back then, I was way too focused on the way things looked on the outside than the way they really were on the inside ... go ahead and chew on that for a bit ... I'm talking about way, way, way more than my house being clean, friends ... way, way, way more. Yep, there are definitely some things I wish I would have done differently when my kids were younger.
My son Brad along with some of my friends at work have been telling me forever that I needed to sign up for Netflix, and I finally succumbed to both peer and son pressure ... that's right, I now officially have a Netflix account. Since I'm like the last person in the world to finally get Netflix, I'm sure most of you have heard about the original Netflix series Orange is the New Black. It's a show about women in prison ... and it's intense, funny, emotional and raunchy all at the same time. It took less than one episode of watching for me to become completely and totally hooked, and I now fully understand what the term "binge TV watching" means ... boy, do I. I'm not sure what I'll do when I get through all of the first two seasons and then have to wait for new episodes to come out each week ... ugghh.
There are some truly interesting characters on the show, but one of my favorites is an African-American gal who is nicknamed Crazy Eyes. I spent the first few episodes thinking she was just over-the-top insane, but as the show progressed and more was revealed about her, I realized that she's actually a very intelligent woman with a good heart. I'm not far enough along to know what crime she committed that resulted in her incarceration, so don't spoil it for me by telling me if she is like the worst serial killer ever in the history of the universe. Just when I was convinced that all of the scenes featuring Miss Crazy Eyes would be at least somewhat comedic in nature, one of the episodes I watched last night was anything but funny. It was so powerful and conveyed such raw emotion that I haven't been able to get it out of my mind.
The scene takes place in a prison restroom when Crazy Eyes comes in to mop the floor and encounters a fellow inmate ... a fellow inmate whose boyfriend had appeared on a radio talk show and told the world that Crazy Eyes was ... well ... certifiably crazy and should be in an institution. When she walked into the restroom and saw Piper, her fellow inmate who had betrayed her trust, I fully expected Crazy Eyes to beat the crap out of her. But instead, she simply told Piper she was a mean person ... that she wasn't nice and that she was mean. As both Piper and Crazy Eyes mopped their respective parts of the floor, Crazy Eyes spoke the words that now refuse to release their grip on me.
"You gotta start from the inside out, or else you'll step on the clean."
Here's the thing ... I've done an awful lot of stepping on the clean over the years because I was mopping the wrong way. I've stepped on the clean over and over and over again because I wasn't starting in the right place ... I wasn't mopping from the inside out. And my guess is ... my guess is I'm not the only one who needs to change the way I mop ... my guess I'm not the only one who's stepping on the clean, friends ... my guess is I'm not the only one at all.
"You gotta start from the inside out, or else you'll step on the clean."
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