A Squash and a Squeeze

My house is on the small side. It has downstairs a kitchen, a dining room, a living room and a relatively wide hall which I desperately try to keep shoe- and coat-free and encourage the children to use as an extra playing space. But really, there's the living room, dining room, and that's it. So when guests come to stay, as they did this weekend, there isn't a lot of personal space for anyone.

I find that 'divide and conquer' works well with little kids who have a tendency to fight. I try to create spaces for all of them to do their thing, which can be a constant juggle of where to put the travel cot today so that the bedroom is free for the older child to have a friend over, or which door to close or table to clear to enable someone to do a jigsaw without toddleric disruption. I find the baby gate to the kitchen invaluable, and have lately taken to perching a tired child on the kitchen counter to watch me make dinner, just to give them something to do other than get annoyed at and hit their siblings. On long days in I try to change the scenery regularly to prevent them all feeling stale, snacking at the miniscule kitchen table and lunching in the dining room, doing crafts downstairs then making a teddies picnic upstairs. With constant work, I can make our little kingdom feel big enough.



But I do struggle when weekend guests come, and the children are wild with excitement and tip all the toys out in their eagerness to show them to the guests, while I desperately try to keep up with the minimal hostess  requirements of regular home-cooked meals, a choice of available snacks, clean surfaces to eat them off and continuous provision of tea.

I listen in dismay from the kitchen to the disastrous events unfolding in the living room (new gifts from the guests being opened and played with before I've vetted them, food being doled out too close to dinner time, a second jigsaw being taken out before the first is put away, even - gasp - electronic equipment in the hands of my children) and quicken my pace of potato mashing while desperately searching for a responsible messenger to send into the living room to stop the madness. (Since my range of responsible messengers basically consists of a five year old and a three year old, usually I resort to making 'suggestions' to the air in a loud but calm voice intended to convey humble confidence and, perhaps, a smidgen of malchus.)

I dash to the dining room, clear the table of a week's worth of crafts all produced in an afternoon of feverish guest-induced craftsmanship, treading on foreign coats and shoes and bags everywhere I step, clean the high chairs of the remains of the last snack, forgotten in the continuous demands of the hour and a half since, and bump into more people on my way back into the kitchen to get dinner. Sending them into the living room to responsibly deliver the message that dinner is ready, it transpires that every continent person in the house then needs to use the one toilet all at once before the meal, including, of course, myself. And half an hour later, when that is achieved, the food, of course, is not at its peak temperature, but that can't be helped as I squeeze my way past all the chairs around the table trying to pour drinks and cut up food for everyone who can't do such things for themselves, and some who can.

And then, they leave.

Ahhhhhh.

I don't mean to convey that I don't enjoy guests. I love guests. The house feels vibrant and I am challenged to rise to a new role. The children are delighted and relationships are forged.

But you know that old chassidish story about the woman who complains her house is too small for her family? Her rav advises that she take the chickens from her yard into the house, and she complies. She feels more overcrowded than ever and asks the rav again for advice. He tells her to bring the goats inside too, and of course, the situation indoors becomes almost unbearable. She returns once more to her rav, who tells her, 'Now, take the goats and the chickens and put them back outside.' Of course, she does as he says, wondering how this will possibly help. And the result? Her house feels enormous, impossibly spacious, and her and her family live with an increased appreciation of the calmness of their home.

We recently found that story in a mainstream book called A Squash and A Squeeze, and we love it and love to live it.

So this weekend, when I was busy treading on people and coats and the like, I was thinking of this book, and now, when they have left and the house has returned to normal - ahhhhhhh. The peace. The space. My three bedroomed terraced house is enormous.

The Squash and a Squeeze message is really something we try to live. When I care for other people's kids, or entertain for shabbas, I'm thinking, what if I did this every day? Do I realise that I don't have to? Do I feel the space of not having to cook for more people than I do, not having to brush more teeth than I do, not having to pay more school fees than I do? I hope to have more teeth to brush and school fees to pay as time goes on, but I hope always in my psyche to stay one step ahead and feel the relative ease and manageability of the extra load that I don't have. This whole idea could be summed up in the three words, "It's all relative." But understanding it is much more complex and experiential than that. As the wise rav in the chassidish story understood, relativity is something you have to feel, to live. Next time I feel something is too much for me, I want to take the slightly crazy step of taking on more, just for a little while.