Every day, moms have a lot on their plates.
Managing multiple responsibilities throughout the day, like cleaning their children’s sticky hands and faces, folding laundry, ensuring they eat breakfast and lunch, and getting them ready for school, leaves parents with a lot on their plates and little time for relaxation.
No matter how hard they try, there will always be some sort of mishap—such as a toy you trip over, a glass of milk that gets knocked over, or a stain somewhere—waiting around the corner.
The luxury of taking a quick shower before going to bed or spending some alone time is something that many mothers cannot afford.
A mother who has seen it all, Heather Duckworth, recently wrote a piece in which she touched on some of the things we take for granted as parents.
A crucial component of that process is the mess that children make as they transform before our own eyes into the people we’ve always thought they’ll become.
It’s crucial to keep in mind that our kids will use the messes we cleaned up when they were adults as the greatest evidence to the upbringing we provided for them, so it’s worthwhile to make an effort to find happiness even in the middle of turmoil.
Unfortunately, not every woman gets to witness the chaos and disarray that kids bring about.
Not all parents are able to experience the happiness that children bring into their life, either.
Many new and expecting mothers connected with Heather’s widely shared post , “The Blue Stain.”
As Heather washed the grout her daughter had created with the slime, her heart began to race as she recalled the catastrophe she had to clean up all those years prior.
This mother would think, “My hands were full, but so was my heart,” after a demanding day of chasing after her two-year-old triplets and her four-year-old elder brother, picking up toys, and making sure no one got hurt in the mountains of laundry she was unable to finish that day.
Heather and her two sons danced to the radio as they cleaned up the playroom before calling it a night.
It was the last time they would laugh so hard for a while, no one could have anticipated.
She was about to go to sleep herself when she heard one of the boys say, “Uh, Oh,” and she noticed the enormous blue stain that would follow her about for the rest of her life.
One of the triplets’ pens exploded in his hand, splattering ink all over the place. Blue pajamas, hands, and face gave the appearance that the little child was a smurf.
Heather became enraged and felt like a lousy mother as she watched.
Although she hadn’t been upset with her son, she did blame herself since she’d placed the pen in a place where kids could readily get to it. She gave in to her emotions.
“When I noticed blue splatters all over the floor and a large pool of ink seeping into our brand-new carpet, I panicked. My husband had been doing the dishes, so I hurriedly shouted for him to come help me. My spouse began cleaning those vivid blue stains off of our carpet as soon as I got my son and took him to the toilet to clean him up. I was immediately upset.
Heather would often get angry and frustrated when she spotted the stain on the brand-new carpet. Up until the day it was eventually removed, the stain represented all the amazing experiences she shared with her sons.
A month after the little child spilled blue paint on the carpet, he was given a cancer diagnosis. Two years later, he passed away, leaving the stain as a reminder of their time together.
It remained in place, but now it served as a continual reminder of my kid. It served as a continual reminder of my annoyance at something so little and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
The blue stain served as a continual reminder that although life is messy, it is still worthwhile. a persistent prompt to stop worrying about the little things. a continual reminder that people matter more than “things.” a continuous reminder that mishaps do occur. a continual reminder to hold fast to what is important and let go of the trivial things.
She attempted to hide the bright blue stain with the furniture, but each time she tidied the space, it was there, glaring back at her, a constant reminder of her loss and the grief she was still experiencing.
The purpose of Heather’s narrative is to serve as a reminder of how frequently we forget to see the small things in life that bring us purpose and take life for granted. She feels compelled to tell all the mothers out there that the toys scattered around and the filthy clothes are what actually provide their homes a feeling of security and comfort for their family.
As Heather puts it, those messes caused by the people we care about the most are what give our lives meaning because the day will come when we will truly miss those times.”If it meant I could spend one more day with my son, I would gladly have a million blue ink stains on my carpet.”
She gives mothers this advice: try not to become so engrossed in the world that you lose out on spending valuable time with your children. Prioritize what really important in life since it’s too short to waste time cleaning stains!
Georg Stanford Brown and Tyne Daly’s interracial marriage stood the test of time despite the prejudices they faced…
Hollywood actors Georg Stanford Brown and Tyne Daly only dated for five months before deciding they wanted to be together forever.
Their love affair began in the 1960s when interracial marriage was considered taboo, illegal, and punishable by law.
They married on June 1, 1966, just one year before interracial marriage became legal across the U.S. As late as 1960 such marriages were illegal in 31 states in the U.S.
Georg Stanford Brown had moved from Havana to Harlem when he was 7 years old and then moved to LA 10 years later where he finished his education, majoring in theater arts.
Although, initially choosing the path of theater arts to ‘do something easy’ he ended up enjoying it and returned to New York to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, working as a school janitor to pay his tuition, earning $80 a week.
It was there that he met his future wife Tyne Daly where they both studied under Philip Burton, Richard Burton’s mentor.
Brown is perhaps best known for his role as Officer Terry Webster, one of the stars of the ABC television series “The Rookies” that aired from 1972 to 1976.
He was also well known for his character Tom Harvey in the mini-series “Roots.”
During his long career as an actor and director, Brown played a variety of film roles, including Henri Philipot in The Comedians and Dr. Willard in Bullitt. In 1984 he starred in The Jesse Owens Story as Lew Gilbert.
When Brown married American singer and actress Tyne Daly she was a household name for her iconic role-playing Mary Beth Lacey, the gun-toting working-mother cop in the hit show “Cagney and Lacey.”
When the couple got married they faced racial prejudice but chose to ignore it – until they appeared on an episode of “The Rookies” together and shared their first on-screen interracial kiss.
Network censors wanted the scene deleted, but the couple stood their grounds, taped, and aired the segment without any issues from those closest to them.
In an interview with the Washington Post in 1985, Daly said she never saw being married to Brown as interracial. She does not, she says, “like pigeonholes.”
She is married to “another member of the human race. I gave up categories a long time ago,” she added.
The couple has three daughters Alisabeth Brown, born December 12, 1967; Kathryne Dora Brown, born February 10, 1971; and Alyxandra Beatris Brown, born October 1, 1985.
Daly said when their daughter Alyxandra was born, “on her birth certificate, under ‘race,’ we put ‘human’; under ‘sex’ we put ‘yes’, and under ethnic origin, we put ‘citizen of the world.’”
Describing her marriage to Brown, Daly said: “I have a good and interesting marriage that has gone on for quite some time and he’s an interesting fellow and we have some fascinating young children . . .”
Brown went into directing, and in 1986, he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Director in a Drama Series for the final episode of “Cagney & Lacey.”
Daly went on to star in many Broadway shows playing the role of Madame Arkadina in “The Seagull” in 1992, Cynthia Nixon in the 2006 comedy “Rabbit Hole,” and Maria Callas in “Master Class” in 2011, among others.
In 1990, after 24 years of marriage, Brown, and Daly filed for divorce. Even though their marriage had stood the test of time, they had to go their separate ways due to irreconcilable differences.
Despite divorcing after more than two decades this couple’s love and their fight to ignore the prejudice they faced is an inspiration.
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