101 Uses for an Old White Sheet

About five months after dh and I were first married, we were asked to serve as a "Ma and Pa" in the East Brunswick, NJ youth conference/pioneer trek—you know, one of those life-altering wilderness experiences for kids, where they dress in pioneer clothes and spend a weekend pulling a 400-pound wooden handcart in families consisting of other youth and two leaders: the Ma and Pa. I remember getting a packet of instructions about our responsibilities, necessary preparations, etc. One of the things we were supposed to do before starting our trek with the kids was to have them make a banner to represent our family. The packet casually suggested, "Bring an old white sheet" to be painted, decorated, and flown on the family handcart.

We didn’t have an old white sheet. We had just gotten married. Everything we owned was bran-spankin’ new and came to us as gifts from receptions and showers. There was no way I was going to use any of our sheets as our family banner.

I can’t remember what I ended up using for our banner, but I do remember feeling an acute sense of not having come of age as a family. Real families have old white sheets. Real families have old sheets that can be used for creative things like youth conference banners. Real families have old things. Real families have things they’ve used so much they can be recycled for new purposes. We had no such possessions, and I felt like it meant we weren’t a real family.

Of course, it didn’t mean that, but owning an old white sheet became a sort of rite of passage to be crossed sometime in the future, and I wondered when it would happen. I quickly felt like we were a married couple, but I wondered when I would feel like we were a family.

Finally, this year I crossed the old-white-sheet rite of passage. Our queen-sized white sheet ripped in the middle and had to be retired as a bed sheet but has been reincarnated as a drop cloth under SJ’s high chair, and now a ghost on our balcony until Halloween. I can’t tell you how grown up I feel! We finally have an old white sheet! And I’ve gotten it dirty and painted it with a happy ghost face. I can’t wait to find another 99 uses for it over the course of a lifetime as a family.

Other things have emerged in life as rites of passage to becoming a family: repeating a tradition created by just us; holding regular family home evenings where gospel instruction actually takes place; eating dinner together.

What are the rites of passage you feel you have crossed to become a family? When did you first feel you were a family? At marriage? After the first baby? Are there any rites of passage you still feel you haven’t crossed? What are they?

And do you have an old white sheet? If so, to what wonderful, creative uses have you put it? I’d love to know, because mine still has a lot of life left in it.