(Don't worry, I'm pretty sure she was just REALLY tired and hadn't actually passed out from the stink.)
I was cleaning out my game/craft cupboard today. For some reason, this one verse was going through my head all day as I watched the kids mill around, and play, and generally make extra messes because it was too cold and windy to go outside, and it's been that way for days and days...a lot of the time, I find myself turning away from the computer, which gets boring after a while, stopping all frantic cleaning activities, and grabbing some books to read with the kids in the rocking chair...
"Cleaning and scrubbing can wait 'til tomorrow..."
It was a "crosstitch poem" on a plaque at my neighbor's house from when I was a teenager. I pretty much LIVED at that house because they had four little girls that I and my sister babysat a LOT. Someday, I'll talk about the adventures we got up at that house but today, I am just reminded of that plaque. I know the whole thing by heart, even after all these years because I'd read it every time I went over there. I never really understood it until I had children of my own:
"Cleaning and scrubbing can wait 'till tomorrow.
For babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and
babies don't keep!"
It's the "Quiet down cobwebs" part that always confused me. I never realized that the poet was TELLING the cobwebs and the dust to be quiet and go to sleep...I wondered "what the heck are 'down cobwebs' and how can dust 'go to sleep'?" Heehee!
So, I looked it up and found that no one knows where the poem came from but the best guess is it might have been part of a longer poem that I've found and absolutely LOVE:
Babies Don’t Keep
By Ruth Hulbert Hamilton
Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,
Lullabye, rockaby, lullabye loo.
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo,
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo,
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.
The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs;
Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.
I especially identify with the line:
"And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo"
