Editor’s Note: This essay originally appeared in New York Family magazine in 2009.
For most of my life, I’ve been the kind of person to walk around my house barefoot, all the time.
Even in the face of my Pakistani aunties’ repeated warnings—that such behavior would result in giant manfeet—I could not be dissuaded from my shoelessness.
Now? I wear slippers so much they fall apart, with the inner lining poking out of the heels at funny angles, so worn that the once purple-and-white-checked fabric just looks gray.
Why? Crumbs. Prior to having our daughter, Wren, my husband and I were never terribly diligent about sweeping, and we even—gasp!—wore shoes in the house. Back then, I would shrug and laugh off sweeping and mopping, quipping, “They’re floors: We walk on them. They’re supposed to be dirty!” After Wren, we found ourselves on such a tight, never-ending protocol of sweeping that we actually invested in a robot vacuum to do the job for us.
And yet. The crumbs. How is it that a sole little toddler, with one charming dimple and lovely little curls, could make our floors dirtier than they were when we a ) didn’t sweep very often, and b) tromped through the house with shoes on, which we no longer do?
Let’s see. Perhaps it is the fact that she snacks all day, usually while wandering around the apartment. Perhaps this is on purpose: Maybe she likes to leave a trail, a la Hansel and Gretel, so that she can retrace her steps and remember that she was “reading” in the bedroom until she got preoccupied by “reading” in the living room.
Perhaps it is her lovely tendency to spit out half-masticated food from time to time. It’s not about not liking the food, mind you. Nothing she eats escapes this once-in-a-while fate; not granola bars, not bunny grahams, not her beloved “cheese-cheese.” (There are a few words Wren will only say twice: “cheese-cheese,” “tired-tired,” and “no-no.” If the repetition is a form of emphasis, she’s dead on the money; what three things could need more emphasis?). Sometimes you just gotta spit out your food for no discernible reason. And then walk away. Perhaps this is baby-speak for “My compliments to the chef.”
Perhaps it is the result of her desire to include the dog in mealtime and her tendency to, in one swift motion, brush every last crumb of leftover food off the table when you least expect it in the pursuit of this end.
Perhaps it is her insistence on being involved in every baking project, either by sitting in the sling and “helping” to dump out measuring cups, or by sitting at the table, busy with a bowl of something—dry oats, water, whatever—and a measuring cup of her own. (This last activity really helps to keep our house neat, by the way: If you desire a pristine and ordered living environment, I highly recommend involving your child in the kitchen at every available opportunity.)
Whatever the reason, our house is full of crumbs. Our house is full of crumbs literally minutes after I finish running the Roomba robot vacuum; indeed sometimes the crumb-filling happens as the Roomba sings its little victory song of cleanliness, as happened tonight when, beckoned by the song, I picked it up from a kitchen floor that felt so smooth under my bare feet, walked it back to its charging station in the room next door, and returned to see a little pile of cheese-cheese crumbles sitting in the middle of the kitchen. With nary a toddler in sight.
Sometimes I feel like this: “If I wanted to rub my feet on my jeans all day long, I would have put them outside my front door and written ‘WELCOME’ on them.”
Other times I feel like this: “Hey, wiping my foot on my jeans is kind of like doing an impromptu tree pose all day long, how great for my thighs!” And then there are times, like right now, when I think, “There is no life lesson in crumbs. No philosophical revelation to attach to them, no bittersweet musings, no soaring crescendo in the rumination on how crumbs play into motherhood. There are just crumbs. Just crumbs: a toddler who makes them, two parents who clean them, one dog that eats them, two cats that sniff them disdainfully, 18 paws and feet covered in them.
Robina Josephine Khalid lives in Brooklyn.
