I’ve been brooding about the chicken run.

It’s a mess—stones scattered everywhere, bits of branches from last fall’s tree trimming project strewn from one fenced wall to the next. Random divots pockmark the dirt and an uneven stubble of nettles, burdock and young blackberry vines fill in what’s left. Every morning on my way to toss a scoopful of grain on the ground and release the girls into the day, my foot will connect with one of those stones or branch cuttings and I’ll wobble a bit off course, stopping short of twisting my ankle. The hens burst out the door, unaware of the squalor that has become the three-season porch to their painted plywood home. Well, perhaps “squalor” is a bit harsh. They’re chickens. They’ll burrow and sit for hours in the dry dusty soil for their summer dirt baths and eat leftover spaghetti right off the ground where we tossed it, without complaint. I should be so low maintenance.

There’s something in me that wants to tidy up around here though, and the chicken run is only the beginning. On my daily walks through the field, I make note of brambles gone wild, reaching their thorny arms well past the established boundary of the cut path. Fallen limbs lurk beneath the forest floor’s thickening new growth of mayapples, trout lilies, miners’ lettuce and the just-born saplings thrown from nearby shagbark hickories and blue beeches. I don’t want to disturb this delicate nursery, but shouldn’t those limbs be gathered up and stacked for heaven’s sake? It would look neater. I hesitate to say anything but think it nonetheless as I stand in the midst of such untamed space: clean this place up! My mother’s voice echoes and swirls to become my own. The Liz apple didn’t fall far from the tree and of course I’m going to reach down to pick it up. Dropped things can’t just stay there now, can they?

Mom and Dad raised five of us for several years before adding our maternal grandmother to our household census. That’s eight people and their things under one roof. Keeping a ranch-style suburban dwelling tidy demanded group participation on a regular basis, and with four of us navigating our way through adolescence at the same time, collaboration toward the “tidy” goal was episodically successful at best. Dad was quietly meticulous about his own stuff—he had a den with a door that shut so he could pay the bills and make notes on his client’s files in peace, and none of us kids dared to cross the threshold without permission (he also had a workshop in the basement. Sawdust was allowed to sit, but his tools were always put away after each job). The den was the room of Serious Importance, and much of what took place within those sacred walls was a mystery until we moved out and understood the weight of paying our own way through life. We came to appreciate the necessary gift of solitude when it came to contemplating and managing one’s future. It’s a lesson I still cherish to this day.

Our home life back then had many moving parts and as children, we just presumed it was up to the taller humans in the room to take care of keeping those parts aligned, easy to find and working properly. Mom wasn’t having it, though, and said as much: “two people can’t clean up after five!” (the maternal grandmother was exempt from clean up duty, though she’d wash your plate mere seconds after you’d scraped off the last bite). Saturday mornings were all about folding laundry (Mom allowed some cartoon-watching in the family room while we did this chore, calling out motivational reminders from the kitchen when our hands would stall and hover over the basket of warm-from-the dryer towels as we fixated on Bugs Bunny’s antics), dusting and polishing the antique furniture (my favorite was the baby grand piano—it was so shiny) and scrubbing the tub in the big bathroom. We may have grumbled our way through some or most of those assigned tasks, especially on particularly bright and beckoning summer mornings, but even we learned quickly how good it felt to see the sink sparkling clean and a full drawer of clean underwear to get us through the week ahead. I’m sure Mom smiled smugly offstage as she watched each of us develop our own self-directed cleaning practices, all the while reaping the benefits of having five semi-professional maids-in-training helping ease her daily housework burden.

Let me say clearly that Mom was no rigid drill sergeant. We had plenty of time to play and ramble about with our own budding youthful agendas, and she indulged any request for a musical sit-down next to her on the bench of that baby grand piano, no matter what she had been doing when we asked (dishes, resting, crossword puzzles, talking with Mrs. Schwartz over the backyard fence). Were any of you to come visit my home today, you’d draw a few sharp conclusions about how faithfully I’ve kept to my own Mom-inspired cleaning practice (I bless the pandemic at times for forcing restrictions on visitors for the past year, but…it shows). To be fair, I think we manage our life’s rhythm and accumulated stuff pretty well for two folks who have full-time jobs and a shared side-hustle of making and selling granola at a nearby farmers’ market. There’s always room for improvement. We make valiant efforts to declutter regularly, almost daily in fact, and yet while we’re asleep our things reproduce or go into hiding and we spend a Sunday afternoon gathering the detritus into bags and boxes for the local thrift store. Some days, we’re content with just having a place to sit; the dust and unfolded laundry can wait.

It’s at times like these that I take my scrutinous eye outside and add to my workload by insisting the forest floor be swept clean, tidied up and made presentable for company. I’m sure the raccoons and tree frogs watching from behind their leafy perches are scratching their heads at my doggedness. Humans…what odd roommates. Of course I don’t succeed and the woods keep growing thick and wild without my help and the residents don’t mind a bit.

That’s when I learn again for the fiftieth time that while the pursuit of order from chaos has its virtue, there’s also a need to embrace the simplicity of letting things go about their business, even for a bit. Leisure climbs easily to the top of our list too, and we need it like the air we inhale. I think if you did come to visit, you’d be far more forgiving than we are about the state of the place. In fact, I’ll bet you’d find it charming and sweet how the tips of the wild raspberry vines along the driveway curl tenderly around the nearby branch of a black walnut, holding fast. We’ll pluck fruits from that vine in a few weeks and I’ll forget that I cared how out of control it looks today. If you’ve ever eaten those raspberries warm from the vine, it can rearrange your priorities pretty quickly.

For now, I give you this verse from Robert Herrick, an 16th-century poet who knew what mattered when it came to keeping things tidy or letting them be a bit out of place. Plucked from my early high school memories, it shall be a work to study as the season of unbridled growth continues to unfold at our bare feet despite my foolish attempts to tame it.

Delight in Disorder

A sweet disorder in the dress.
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown.
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoestring, in whose tie
I see a wild civility;
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.