After weeks of holidays, illnesses, snow days, and tidal waves of errands and tasks, I woke up Monday morning to a blank slate on my calendar — no appointments, no scheduled work or meetings, no agenda. When you’re a mom and wife with a job, a contracting position, and a side business, just the thought of a day like this is a dream. So obviously, I put on work out clothes (notice I did not say “went to the gym” because, alas, that sunk rapidly to the bottom of the priority list), got the kids off to school, and then attacked “tidy the house” with a rare voracity.

I’m a 42 year-old mother with 2 knees that aged very prematurely, but when I find myself in this rare setting, I imagine I could keep up pretty well with an Olympic speed-skater. I was feeling pretty giddy about the rapid total transformation, to be honest, and that is when I looked down and realized I was shining our teapot with steel wool. That is the exact moment in which I returned to my body after that post-race high and thought what in the actual fuck is happening here?

I have shined a teapot exactly twice in my life — and if I ever add thrice to that count in my lifetime, it will be too soon. (The first was Election Night when Trump was gaining steam and I was feeling a degree of panic that one can only sustain for a short while before it devolves into the ache of hopelessness I’ve now discovered one can just live with, even though you’re sure it should kill you.) I’m simply not a “shine the silver” type of gal. It does not bring me an ounce of joy to do the shining or enjoy the shine afterward. So to say this is a really weird thing for me to have prioritized is basically the understatement of the century.

In that moment, I consciously thought to myself what am I panicking about today that has me shining a freaking teapot again?! (Can I just get a “Yay for therapy!” and maybe an enthusiastic “Yay for acknowledging deeply programmed intergenerational behavioral patterns!”)

I’ve given it some thinking, and here’s what I’m circling around to. The panic this week wasn’t about some impending doom. It was about acknowledging the need for and sorting through the collective doom that’s shellacked its way onto my psyche these last years. It was about making a choice about how to tidy up the mess it’s left behind, which means stripping away some of the crud and revealing the good stuff that’s still just fine underneath.

For the record, the tiny human rodents we live with only noticed (with dismay) the itsy-bitsy portion of tidying that resulted in their semi-permanent LEGO City installation relocation from the living room to the basement bedroom. Even my husband (who perhaps doesn’t feel an equal amount of joy from a clean house as I, but certainly experiences a comparable degree of disorientation in a messy house) uttered a conservative but relieved “thanks for picking up.”

I’ll admit, I wanted to scream maniacally, “did you even see the goddamn teapot?!” But instead, I made myself a steamy cup of green tea from that shiny, beautiful pot and continued the important work of dusting off, desludging, and shining the head on my shoulders so I can reveal the good stuff that’s still just fine underneath.