Cleaning and polishing swallowed up many hours of our life in the selling of our house. We erased 13 years of memories in a few weeks of time.
“What did you do?” I shrieked one day when I found several princess stickers stuck to the bedroom closet door.
” It’s pretty! Goldi proclaimed.
A little Goo gone and endless hours of nail biting- gone.
Kicking filled the room room. Goldi was having one of her “moments.” Her thunder could compete with a real storm. Magic eraser time, soap and water blew it away.
Between bites of food, Goldi paced back and forth at dinner. While watching the part when Cinderella sings with the birds, or Wilbur runs after Fern, she jumped, leaving continuous footprints on our hardwood floor. Several floor polishings later, it was print free.
You’d have to squint to see what once made our home sweet. No one would ever know that an autistic girl lived there. A new family has hung their hat and begun to print up the house. Our life exists now in a “sparkling new” home. According to all the visitors thus far, it even smells new. The walls are freshly painted all smooth and clean. ( But alas, you breath or pass by and a handprint falls on them) It will take our own prints to make this empty canvas of a house sweet. So let the housebreaking begin.
Leaving a print comes natural for Goldi. There are marks on the wall and floor from her feet and hands. (Many exciting new experiences equals many jumps. ) There are play dough smears and crumbs on the garage floor because of summer afternoon creation. There are finger smudges on the large living window when she’s pressed herself against it to see the best view. There is the inevitable sticker residue on her closet and bedroom door. I want to keep that wonderment of all the possibilities of memories in our new home fresh. But after three months of living here, our print is spreading around and penetrating the house with everyday smudges, wrinkles, smells, and holes. These are the prints that make home sweet.
Sweet is the print making Goldi leaves. LIke when she greets each house guest with light up eyes and jumps three feet high making the house rattle and leaving a footprint. Sweet is when she blares out her Broadway voice and her song echoes and travels to every corner of the house. Sweet is the staging of many dolls and trinkets that clutter her room and await for her to tell their story. This house as fresh and handsome as it is,- is now sweet because of the print of a creative, vivacious gal, and she continues to be limitless in the pursuit of home sweet making.
Sweet is when dinner grace is said, and there’s a thousand things to be thankful for and just one “please give me”. Sweet is her noticing the sky around our house and the way the sun makes it glow over the treetops. Sweet is the way she knows just the right cupboard for the band aides when someone she loves sheds tears . Sweet is the way she retells the stories of God’s print on this world on our downstairs stage, and says with all her might “I am the Lord your God.!”
A home sweet home print is left by all who chose to take to heart as Goldi does, the job of leaving this sorry world a better place. Smudges, fingerprints, holes in the wall, yes, our autistic Goldi- is making the world a better place. Only the Lord of this Earthly Home has made her prints sweet through His glorious power just as he does for each of us if we so let Him. The Lord of it all chose Goldi to show this to me and anyone else who chooses to pay attention. It’s a homeprint that is being treasured up in heaven- our Sweetest of Homes.
storytellertellsall 