Let Lift & Listen

Growing up in Wisconsin, my siblings and I drove Mom crazy with all of our stuff, especially in the winter. We would come in from sledding or walking home from school or ice-skating on the frozen lake and thoughtlessly drop everything on the floor, right inside the door. Mittens, boots, hats, coats, books, scarves, skates—you name it—piles of wet, soggy stuff were strewn across the floor.

My mom lectured, begged, threatened, and probably grew to dislike us more and more. We began to resent her and her constant nagging. My older sister thought it funny to call her Estelle the maid, and we all joined in. It was hilarious—to us.

In truth, as children we found it easier to endure Mom’s nagging than to take responsibility for our belongings and put them away. Tuning out her constant reminders became second nature to us. Little did we realize the toll it took on our relationship with our hardworking and exasperated mom.

Then, as wise mothers often do, Mom outsmarted us. When my parents put an addition on our house, she designed a remarkable foyer with big doors that opened into a set of five floor-to-ceiling niches. She had allocated a dedicated space for each of us, complete with hooks for our coats, lower shelves for our boots, and reachable shelves for our books, hats, mittens, and other belongings. Little did we know that Mom was ahead of her time, pioneering the concept of cubbies way back in the 1970s. It was truly brilliant.

So what did we do when this masterpiece was complete? After Mom had labeled each of our sections and proudly shown us how easy she had made it for us? Well, if you’re a parent, you can probably guess.

We dropped everything on the floor. Five kids. Five piles of wet, soggy stuff.

But Mom was a step ahead of us. She had already figured out a way to let the consequences do the teaching.

This was before the days when closet design effectively used dead corners. There was a corner cupboard for my mom and dad’s coats with unused space to one side of it. To address this, the contractor had built a half wall, preventing boots and shoes from being pushed back out of sight to the bottom of the hanging closet. This created what came to be known as the black hole.

Venturing into the black hole required pushing all the coats aside and leaning over the half wall. It was dark and scary back there. Probably full of spiders.

My mom decided that since the wet belongings on the floor were in the way, she would just deposit them in the black hole, where they would be out of sight and out of mind. When we asked where our coat or scarf or bookbag was, she would sweetly reply, “Have you checked the black hole?”

We now had a choice. We could either put our things away when we arrived home, in a place that allowed them to dry and remain spider-free and easy to find, or we could lean over the wretched wall and sort through the wet, nasty pile to locate what we wanted.

We didn’t like it. We complained and called her mean. However, our mother never reciprocated our anger. She refrained from delivering lectures or uttering phrases like “If you put it away . . .” Instead, she gracefully let the consequences do the teaching. Some of us learned more quickly than others. We all learned to stop complaining to her because it got us nowhere.

The black hole prompted us to reconsider our habits. The allure of an organized, spider-free storage space versus the hassle of rummaging through the black hole shifted our perspective and forced us to contemplate the benefits of responsible actions. We were left saying to ourselves, Next time I’ll put it away so that I don’t have to go into the black hole. Now that we’re grown, we remember her as a smart woman instead of as a nagging mom.