Come Over to My House

There's no place like home for playtime
and friendship.

“Can you come over to my house to play?”

Was there ever a more exciting question a child could hear asked of him or her? It may be common now to have playdates with friends at the local destination, but when I was a kid, we played in houses. Remember all those messy houses mentioned in the previous post? They were mostly messy because we were playing in them. We still made trips to the zoo and enjoyed an occasional outing to a museum, but those were special events, not playdates. We socialized with others by hosting them in our own homes, where the possibilities for entertainment could be boundless, depending on the parent who owned the hosting house. 

Warm afternoons found school girls skipping rope or playing hopscotch on the driveway. If we got bored with conventional games, we would take turns tying someone to a tree in a game of knots, testing our skills at tying and untying. On chilly winter days we might sprawl out in the sunny spot of the kitchen floor for endless games of Jacks, laughing together when a ball bounced into a cocoa mug. Tea parties were also a choice activity for girls eager to enjoy tasty tidbits elegantly served in a manner reminiscent of the latest Montgomery read. We would rummage through bins of old bridesmaid dresses or not-quite-vintage castoffs from our mothers’ adolescent wardrobes and then spend the tea recreating scenes from Avonlea. On special evenings, we might snuggle up in sleeping bags on a living room floor and watch a favorite movie together, sipping our raspberry ginger ale through Twizzler straws.

While my friends and I trooped around in tripping skirts, my brother and his friends left their mark on our home by smelting in the dining room (with my mother’s permission; she didn’t think the splatter would reach the ceiling). When the projects grew bigger, they moved to the backyard fire pit, which they redesigned as teenagers to be a more effective furnace for their blacksmithing adventures. The Lord of the Rings inspired more than one boy to craft his own sword. The added bonus of all this fire-making was an opportunity to invite families over to enjoy hotdogs and marshmallows at a well-established bonfire. In the snowy months, our backyard was often alive with hammering and feasting.

Inevitably, we outgrew tea parties and swordplay—but never cocoa or friendship. In fact, as I settled into hosting college girls and working women at my own apartment, I found that while these women appreciated being treated at a local coffee shop, what they all loved most was simply flopping down on my sofa, burrowing into the abundance of fuzzy blankets, and talking. Candles, chocolate, and undistracted conversation in a real living room soothed many an anxious or lonely spirit. What homesick hearts need most, of course, is simply a dose of home. Nothing can give that like a house cluttered by humans and busy with living. We may grow in our sophistication, but we never outgrow our need of home.

Home. So ordinary, but so much scope for the imagination. So much freedom to move, talk, eat, and laugh.

Zoos are fun. Museums can be interesting. Indoor playgrounds are a must for expending pent-up energy in the midst of polar winter. Coffee shops are convenient. All of these places have their advantages as meeting places. In some cases it might lessen the distance each family has to drive to see each other. Also, when we go somewhere else, we don’t have to worry about the messiness of our house, the refreshments (or lack thereof) we might offer, or how to keep kids entertained. We don’t even have to worry about the mess that would be made by playtime. The bathrooms at the zoo are someone else’s responsibility. At a museum, everyone treats themselves to necessary snacks. No one bears the weight of hosting. It sounds so very carefree. And yet, does it really provide a satisfying visit?

My kids love the zoo and they love seeing their friends, but when I see them at the zoo with their friends, I see the tug-of-war going on in their minds. What do they pay attention to: their friends or the animals? How can they converse in hallways reverberating with noise? How do they play in a place not meant for tea parties or imaginary battles or races? How can they engage their friends when their friends are bombarded with stimulation from all other sides? For that matter, how can I? It can be hard to focus on getting to know someone better when navigating crowds, keeping track of children, and trying to locate the nearest possible restroom.

I recently asked my mom: why didn’t we make more of an effort to meet up with friends outside of homes? Why did we host in our homes? Sometimes it did come down to budget—there simply wasn’t money to go out. It also kept life simple, encouraging us to be creative and resourceful together in finding fun with what we had on hand. But most of all, it kept life relational. The focus of our time together was on relationships, not entertainment.

Hospitality isn’t about entertainment. It’s about individuals. The point is to have this time to be apart together and focus on each other in a way we can’t when surrounded by a crowd in a public place. At home we converse in a way we couldn’t otherwise. When we invite people into our home, we are inviting them in out of the crowd, into our personal refuge where we can talk, struggle, pray, and know Jesus better because of the friendships He has given us. 

It’s been a long time since I played Jacks or dress-up, and a good many of my childhood chums live out of state. However, the friendships built in those frequent playtimes in messy homes live on. They live on in text messages and phone calls, in snatched visits when someone comes to town, in emails asking for prayer, and even on social media. When I mentioned memories of our five gallon bucket in the previous post, my friends went into reminiscing mode about our simple and shared childhood. The highlights that surfaced most were Totino’s pizza and movie nights with our parents. Some may say we’re just nostalgic. Some may say we’re crazy. Maybe we’re both, but the fact is we still love each other and care about each other. We’re still real friends 20 years, even 30 years later. That’s what matters most.

So please, come over to my house! It won’t be perfect, but it will be full of possibilities. It won’t be spotless, but it will be spacious. Please inconvenience me; please come make a mess. It will be more comfortable and fun than any mall play area you can find. Come over and enjoy the sun warming you through my kitchen window while our children run and play. Come over and let our walls ring with our shared laughter. Come over for a chat and let our kids learn how to talk to each other, how to share ordinary life together. We can visit the zoo another day—come over to my house and play.

Messy House Hospitality

Hospitality doesn't mean the table is flawless,
but that it is full.

It’s a Thursday evening in June. You’ve just started busing dirty supper dishes to the counter—the sink is already filled with dishes from earlier meals in this B.D. (Before Dishwasher) era. The phone rings. Leaving the dog to prewash the casserole dish, you answer.

“Oh good! You’re home. Hey—we’ll be over in about 10-ish minutes with a big bucket of ice cream. Make sure to have some bowls ready.” Click.

Ten minutes. Never mind the pans. You have just enough time to clear the table, wash and dry bowls and spoons for eight people, and make sure that there isn’t any dirty underwear hiding out in the bathroom. The rest… well, you don’t even think about the rest.

This was a normal occurrence in my childhood. There were premeditated social gatherings on the calendar, planned in advance with time for extensive cleaning, but most of our social life happened in those spur-of-the-moment ice cream calls or bonfire-in-the-backyard invitations. The point was to spend the time together, laughing at our experiences of life in an inner city, sharing memories from vacation or parents’ childhoods, or rejoicing in God’s goodness in providing kids with bikes, parents with cars. I remember many evenings of full tables and good conversation, but not clean houses.

By “clean” I mean “immaculate”—homes with no visible crumbs on the carpet or dust on the knick-knacks. Those houses were a minority. It wasn’t that we didn’t care. I remember cleaning! It’s just that in certain seasons of lots of children and ministry and work, things piled up. Lego creations, markers and papers from craft projects, books from homeschool, baskets of laundry (sometimes dirty, sometimes clean; check carefully), and the half-finished games of Monopoly and Battleship littered the house. It took a while to get to the dust on picture frames. The goal was tidy. You should be able to find a place to sit down, a table to eat at, and a toilet and sink above reproach. Dust bunnies were barely noticed anyway, overshadowed by the always present “conversation piece” of unfinished house repair. Most of us lived in houses going on eighty or ninety years old that demanded attention. When our bathroom sink pipe refused to drain or be drained, we simply removed part of the offending pipe and put a five gallon bucket in its place to catch the wastewater, which would be emptied into the toilet (a great way to study water usage, by the way). The repair was potentially complicated, so we lived that way—and hosted that way—for years. It became its own kind of ice breaker with guests at the dinner table. I never thought of it, except to warn my friends to let us know when the bucket was getting full. We never thought of not hosting because of it. The fellowship was more important than the fuss. And what do we remember most now? Chaos, perhaps, but chaos dominated by friendship, warmth, and hospitality in Jesus’ name.

Today my husband and I live in a relatively young house, but chaos remains a theme. With four young children—a collector, an artist, a mother-in-training to animals and dolls, and a builder—there are days when there is more tape on the floor than on the walls. It takes talent to do that. While our kids are working hard at learning to do chores cheerfully, it seems that the more they clean, the more they feel free to clutter. What’s a mom to do? Locking the door and barring the entrance hardly seems an attractive solution to the problem. After all, it’s fellowship that we need most right now—other people to come and laugh with us through this tornado. But hosting people in this? This jumble of dolls, paper, rocks, and magnet tiles?

While preparing to host a playdate this spring, I turned into the monster-mom, banishing dust bunnies and stuffed animals with a fervor that sent kids running. I had twenty minutes and every toy in the house seemed out of place. Also, the bathroom vanity still held traces of yesterday’s dirt from my diggers’ splashing hands. Scrubbing and sweating up a storm, I suddenly stopped and looked in the mirror. What I am trying to do?  I asked myself. Who exactly am I trying to impress? You see, the person coming to my home was my former roommate—that person I shared a bathroom and bedroom with for four years. We had scrubbed and swept together. We had seen each other’s dirt. Not just that, she was bringing her own four young sons over to play.

I finished wiping the sink and put away the cleaning supplies. The monster left. I made a cup of tea and told my kids it was all right. It was all right. The house wasn’t spotless, but it would be just fine. It was. As my friend wisely pointed out, “If I waited until my house was clean to see people, I would never see anyone.” The seeing is what is most important. Our eight kids ran amuck slaying dragons and making birthday parties for stuffed bunnies while we shared tea and thoughts. We didn’t need an immaculate house. We just need a tidied corner of kitchen to sit down for a chat in a house that let our kids enjoy playing together.

We regularly host people—with children and without—in our house. We do our best to keep things tidy, but mostly, we try to make it comfortable and welcoming. We still fight clutter, but we have come to realize that atmosphere is mostly about attitude, about a host with a heart at peace. In the last minute visits of my childhood, I don’t remember my mom turning into a cleaning monster storming the Lego lands of the living room. You just cleaned the bowls, cleared the seats, and made sure the bathroom was decent. Love covers a multitude of sins, and I suspect that true hospitality hides a heap of imperfections. That’s likely why my memories are more about ice cream and laughter than messiness.

So friend, you’re welcome. Give me a call. The house may not be spotless, but if you give me 10 minutes, I’ll put the kettle on, make sure the underwear is in the hamper, and that one bathroom is wiped clean. There will be a comfy chair free for you. Better yet, as the days grow colder and we Minnesotans can’t share a playdate on that neutral plot of playground, invite someone into your own home. That other mom with toddlers and cabin fever? The mom and kids who just moved here? Invite her and her kids into your home—your busy and imperfect home. Share a cup of tea, share laughter over life, and share with her that loving invitation from Jesus: “Come.”