Another Day in the Country
Getting ready for Mrs. Clean
© Another Day in the Country
It’s a lovely thing to have a daughter who is a good housekeeper. She’s tidy, organized, keeps a spotless kitchen and bathroom, and is coming to visit.
No one ever called me Mrs. Clean, but I do try to keep a house that is clean and comfortable to visit.
There are always clean sheets, a stack of clean towels, and a mirror and chrome that shine.
But depending on what my week has been like before you arrive, there may be stuff stacked in the closet, dust and extra throw rugs stashed under the bed, and dust on the woodwork if you check door jams and molding with a white glove.
The floor will be vacuumed and table tops dusted, but the corners or the edges may be lackluster. For one thing, I don’t bend as easily nor see as clearly as I once did.
“So, live with it,” I say.
We do our best. So today I’m cleaning “Jana’s room.” My sister is more particular, so she has come to help.
“Where do I start?” she wants to know.
“In the bathroom,” I tell her.
She stands surveying the room.
“What do you use to clean?” she wants to know.
I laugh. Comet, Windex, soap and water…
She sighs.
“I’ll go get my own cleaning supplies. I need something non-abrasive.” she says.
That’s the moment I head to the computer. I’ve got to write this down. When she comes back with her toolkit of supplies and spies me not cleaning, she’ll sigh again but soldier on.
I have a big kitchen. It includes an eating area. The last time Jana was here, she took on that job of deep cleaning the floor area.
I thought it looked pretty tidy — especially after it’s swept — but when Jana got through with it, I remembered the original color. It is now several shades lighter.
It was rather embarrassing to have someone else really clean this large expanse of floor in my house.
When I said something to my daughter, she answered, “You shouldn’t be doing this at your age. It’s something I can do for you!”
There was that age business again.
For this visit, my sister wanted to make sure that Jana didn’t tackle rejuvenating the kitchen floor, so she did it!
“We’re not having Jana grab cleaning supplies the minute she arrives,” Jess said. “This is her vacation!”
I tried not to feel guilty that it wasn’t me down on my hands and knees scrubbing that floor.
As I worked cleaning other parts of the house, I could hear Jess exert herself in my kitchen — cleaning. I had to force myself not to run in and say, “Stop, stop, let me do this.”
I knew she didn’t want me to insist on doing it myself, so I practiced being older, thankful, appreciative, grateful, and relieved when everything was ready for the next wave of guests.
A friend who has been having trouble with her ticker texted me and said, “Oh, this growing old business is so hard.”
She’s right. It isn’t easy. But I think the thing that suffers most as the years go by — and we aren’t as spry — is our pride.
I forgot all about my pride and the fact that someone else scrubbed my kitchen floor last night when my cousin’s kids and their kids came to visit.
We sat around the table and played games, nine of us on chairs and stools that we pulled from different spots in the house. Some were high, some lower.
We were crowded together playing a game called “Know Your Family,” where we took turns drawing a card and presenting a challenge or a question to the table. Whoever got the right answer first kept the card.
This was my family sitting here, and I discovered there was quite a lot I didn’t know about the California crew. For anything about favorite songs or names of current cartoon characters, I was completely out of ideas.
That’s one of the sacrifices one makes when your family members have to commute a couple of thousand miles to sit at your table.
One of the joys of having everyone, ranging in age from 7 to 87, come together is the laughter echoing through the house as we play games!
We’ve been keeping tabs with erasable markers on a window-pane mirror that hangs near the kitchen table.
Each of us has a square, and we make a mark under our name when we win a game.
Dagfinnr is ahead with 27 wins, I have 14, Jess has 12, and Jana just put up her mark. We just picked her up from the airport yesterday. She’s only spent a day in the country.