Just say yes

Once upon a time, my sister helped me make my bed. I said to her, “Will you help me put sheets on the bed?” And she said, “Yes.”

Not sure or okay or I guess.

But yes.

Now, stretching those annoying elastic corners around my mattress may well have been her version of hell, but she didn’t say that. She didn’t even make it seem like purgatory. Heavenly may be going too far, but that yes hit me right in the soul. Yes and not yeah made me feel that my asking wasn’t an inconvenience or a bother. She was not just willing to help—she wanted to help.

Saying yes is a lost art.

It’s Spring Break in Chicago. While for some, this means taking a week off classes and heading to Miami to kill brain cells which have been burdened with tens of thousands of dollars of college learning, for those of us too young, too old, or too uncool for 24/7 parties, it means Spring Cleaning!

I love Spring Break and Spring Cleaning. I love projects. SB is a spectacular-spectacular, a grand production of clearing out the winter and getting ready for summer. I have an epic list of rearranging, purging, and celebrating that I have been planning and anticipating for months, and now it is go-time!

But I am the only one going.

Once upon another time, we could easily fit two cars in our two-and-a-half car garage. My husband complains about the overabundance of disused stuff regularly. For years he has threatened to put all the furniture and boxes in the alley for trash collection and junkers.

So, on day 1 of Spring Break Cleaning, I invited him to a garage purging party—there would be music and coffee. We could get bagels. We could even include the kids who would enjoy seeing relics from their past (I found 2 car seats and a box of sidewalk chalk that was an unopened gift from my 13-year-old son’s preschool graduation) and perhaps enjoy a bit of urban scatology.

He RSVP’d, yeah—okay.

At 8am on SBC day 2, he said, “Well, are we going to do this thing or not?” We did this thing. The garage went on a 90 minute diet that I can only dream of—pounds and inches of unwanted bulk just disappeared! We have a neighborhood Freecycle board through which neighbors re-home things they no longer need and on which I posted a snowblower, push mower, Ikea Kura bunk bed, book shelves, a food dehydrator, 2 folding chairs, a bistro set, and a shadow box I’d had and not used for 17 years.

Everything was gone and in someone else’s garage by 10:30 am.

It. Was. So. Satisfying.

I felt energized all morning and ready to tackle another room of neglected stuff. I said to him, “Doesn’t it feel good to have that taken care of? That Freecycle thing rocks!” And he replied, “Yeah, I guess—I wanted to do that last year.”

Did you hear my balloon pop?

Couldn’t he have just said yes?

I know he will be annoyed with me for sharing this story, but I am willing to take the risk. And I am willing to say, “Yes, I like doing lame adult things like cleaning out the garage if it allows us time to be together and achieve results we both want.” And, “Yes, I would love your company and support to do more projects that help us make our home more comfortable.” And, “Yes, yes is just the bit of affirmation I need to believe that, yes, you want to do this thing, too.”