Some thoughts on Entropy

A couple weeks ago,  I had foot surgery.  I am now in a non weight bearing cast for at least 4 more weeks.  Long, long weeks.  Most of length of my weeks has to do with the fact that I have my own way of cleaning, organizing and doing the wash.  Now I must rely on someone else(my children) to do it their way.  Watching the dust bunnies multiply reminded me of an essay I wrote over ten years ago.   Enjoy!

     Back when we had only thirteen children, I was looking for a creative way to write our annual newsletter and what came out was the following detective story.

     Case file # 1-39A Willitt O.Willittson here (W.O.W) for short). Private Eye.

     This story may not sound true, but this harrowing experience was nearly my last.

     It all began one crisp autumn day at my office in rural Dornsife.  A rapid knocking sounded, but before I could rise to open the door, it burst open and a blond, disheveled young man, gasping for breath and babbling incoherently met my eyes.  The only words I could make out were…”mother, crazy,” and “can’t find”

     I finally convinced the poor fellow to sit down and offered him a glass of water.  After he had regained his composure, he told me his tale.

     It started last May when the family’s socks began disappearing at an alarming rate.  This wasn’t too bad, because Mr. Ilgenfritz, the head of the home, had a sock condition that caused him to buy new socks every two or three weeks.  He also coded the socks “Dad’s”, “Dad’s New”, etc. so they wouldn’t get lost.  Be that as it may, a few weeks ago, when the family was eating breakfast, they noticed that they only had half as many bowls as usual.  Then they noticed that no matter how many dishes they washed, there were never enough knives in the drawer.  This strange lack of household items was driving their mother nearly to insanity.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she saw that time was never enough.  Why just the other Sunday, the youth reported, they noticed that the days were getting shorter.  The boy looked at me with fear in his eyes.  With thirteen children in the household, this was serious.

     I took the case!

     My first line of attack to crack this case was to investigate the thirteen children.  Children often know much more that they let on, so I would have to be discrete.  I decided to start with the youngest children first.

     Hosannah was walking around and around the table with a sock in one hand, muttering “Da-DA-Da.”

     While this seemed a promising suspect, I soon realized that thirteen months was pretty young to steal socks, bowls and knives, not to mention time, so I turned my attention to Moriah.

     With his eager smile and bright blue eyes, I thought I’d make progress.  He only grinned and said “nite-nite Ben”

This seemed to be his standard response to all the big boys.  The only other word I got from him was “NO”, but he’s two so what else could I expect.

      Jedidiah (four) and Ephraim (three) got my attention next.  They were coloring pictures at their long table.  Jedidiah was drawing lobsters.  He’s been doing this since he was in Maine in June.  Ephraim was scribbling letters to his cousin Peter.  At the same time, they were singing cow songs and refused to speak with me, a total stranger.

     I tracked Elijah (six) down outside, shooting at targets with his bow.  Hoping to gain more insight, I implied that he might know something, at which point he ran inside with his blankie, leaving behind a knapsack packed with several socks, a bowl, and a knife, but not enough to warrant this investigation.  He later claimed it was because he was going camping.

     David (seven) was playing “Away in the Manger” on the piano.  He said he knew nothing about socks and his interest was in collecting giraffes.  I did notice a copy of Sherlock Holmes on the bench beside him, but paging through it gave me no clues. I also noticed he was wearing tennis shoes with no socks, but I decided to interview Esther as David wasn’t very informative.

     Esther (eight) was full of information.  She could tell me to the exact minute when each missing item was noticed, who was in the room at the time of discovery, and a variety of other irrelevant facts about family members but she had no idea who was guilty.  She said she had to practice piano then, and I went in search of Noah (ten).

     He was shooting holes in apples with his BB gun and claimed to have no information.  I did note that he was wearing socks, and also that he had a large safety pin hooked on his belt loop which is how the Ilgenfritz’s keep their socks matched in the wash, but this didn’t help my investigation.

     I returned to the house where Naomi (eleven) was busy sketching.  She had no new information but did volunteer to draw my picture.  I’ve included it with this transcript.

     Hannah (twelve) was playing the violin and only smiled at my questions.  When she finished her practicing, she disappeared behind the covers of a large book.  This left me only three teens to interview.

     Josiah (thirteen) had six or seven safety pins on his belt loop, leading me to surmise that he was forgetful about pinning his socks together, but nothing about missing socks, table knives or cereal bowls.  He was lying on his bed reading.  We talked until his train clock began running around the track.  Then he politely dismissed me and returned to his book.

     Benjamin (fifteen) was outside building a dam in the stream.  He answered many questions about gardening, building as well as hunting and fishing, but not a clue about missing items in their home.

     I was stumped.  This was the toughest case I’d hit yet.  Seth (sixteen) who had sought my help was out in his car practicing parallel parking but I already knew all his information.  What was I missing?  I decided to talk to Mrs. Ilgenfritz.  She was peeling potatoes with one of the few remaining knives and singing softly...

     “Socks that are matching, and knives in the drawer,

     Swiss Mocha coffee, no towels on the floor.

     Floors that are swept, and no missing shoe strings,

     These are a few of Mom’s favorite things.”

     I didn’t wait to hear the rest of the song.  It was clear I could never solve this puzzler.  There were simply too many variables.  Chalk this one up to experience, I’ll pass.  As for Mrs. Ilgenfritz – her final words as I left were, “its okay, that’s just life with thirteen children.”

     Whenever life begins going along smoothly, there will be a bump in the road just to remind us that we are dependent on God, not ourselves and force us to turn again to Him.

There is also the fact that nothing ever stays the same.  It is constantly wearing down or breaking or descending into chaos. 

    Last winter I was pretty sure entropy was overtaking us.  It started with the dishwasher.  We were renovating a house and in the course of working on the kitchen at the new house, a new dishwasher came my way as well.  The old one had been subject to random fits of leakage so this seemed a good time to replace it.  This appeared to be an easy task but when Mark pulled out the old dishwasher, we discovered that it had been leaking for quite awhile through the floor and into the basement, just not out in front where we could see it.  The floor underneath was rotten.  Obviously this would be a bigger project than we anticipated at first.

     While this project was still in process, our water in the house began shutting off.  We have our own well and I am used to running quite a few things in my attempts to multitask.  I can have someone in the shower, run two washing machines, the kitchen sink and the dishwasher all at one time without too much  distress for the person in the shower.  Suddenly I could only use one item at a time and it wasn’t going to be the dishwasher.   The only way to deal with this problem was run to the basement, shut off the washing machines, turn off the pump, wait a few minutes, reset the pressure switch, run back upstairs and remember to start everything up again.

     We were all still fairly cheerful about these things and then the house got cold and then colder.  It was January and I don’t tolerate cold very well. Since Mark was going out to get plumbing parts, he decided he might as well get some furnace parts too.  Then, to take the cake, our old furnace down in the basement sprang an oil leak.  Now my husband can fix anything but everything in one week was a little much.  Still, one can either laugh or cry.  We decided to have a good laugh and then work at fixing one thing at a time.  The furnace has been removed, the circulator fixed, the water tank has a new pressure switch and I have a new list of things that need repaired this winter.

     Entropy hits us in other areas also. For example, I have a dishwasher, a regular sized kitchen sink and a large 3 bay restaurant size sink and I still cannot keep up with the demand for clean dishes. Over the years I have become convinced that that at least in our house, dirty dishes breed in the sink at night.  No matter how empty the sink is at night, there are more dishes there in the morning.  One year I interviewed some of the children to see if anyone knew the answer.  Benjamin was seventeen at the time, and he offered the first plausible theory.

     “I believe dishes are like Hattifatteners.  The multiply especially fast during thunderstorms.  Outlets by the sink increase this disposition still more”

     This didn’t entirely explain my dish problem, so I asked Naomi.  She put forward her theory eagerly.  “Dishes are relatives to amoebas and they divide asexually at night while no one is looking.”

    Ephraim and Jedidiah simply said “Mom, eating food makes more dishes.” 

     They wondered why was this was so hard for me to understand.  They also added they sincerely hoped I wasn’t planning to ask them to help whip the dishes into submission.

     The more I think about housework and dishes, the more I become convinced that it is a simple mathematical equation. The degree of cleanliness of your house is a directly proportional ratio of mess created by toddlers and ability and numbers available to clean.  In other words, if you have mostly older children, your house will be cleaner than if you have a higher ratio of preschoolers.

     On the other hand, no matter how many preschoolers or almost adult children you have, entropy is always out there lurking just beyond the door, waiting to force its way in.  My husband is not so romantic about it.  He just says,  ” Everything is either being cleaned up or messed up. There is no in- between”

     He is right of course. There is nothing really lurking and conspiring to trash my house.  Life is messy and I have come to grips with that.  I refuse to give up and let it overtake me but neither shall I let it rule my life.  When everything breaks down, its time to gird up my loins and go to work so that when we are done, we’ll have another memory in our cache of stories to tell when we are old.