Spring Cleaning

By Judith Ford

My grandmother, who was Dutch, did an incredible job of spring cleaning, every March, every year she was alive. No object and no surface was spared a scrubbing. Rugs were taken out and beaten within an inch of their threaded lives; walls were washed with a hard brown scrub brush. Curtains taken down and washed. Every closet emptied, every sheet and towel bleached and washed. Everything dried outdoors on a clothesline. In March, Wisconsin is still cold so things froze out there, pillowcases transformed into wrinkled boards. Socks turned into twisted sculptures. She washed every dish and pot and spoon. Then when it was all done and everything set back in its proper place, she’d cover the sofa and chairs and lampshades in the living room with plastic covers. She’d lay a plastic path from doorway to living room couch and into the dining room. When I was around 11, I asked her, finally, who she was keeping everything so clean for and when would she remove the ugly plastic. (I didn’t say the word, ugly, I’m sure). “The plastic keeps everything ready for company,” she replied. “But, “I protested, “Aren’t I company?” I had never once seen her living room without plastic. “You,” she explained, “are family. Not company.” She didn’t need to add that I, being a rather messy child, was one of the reasons she protected her furniture.

My mother didn’t do spring cleaning. She did like to open up all the windows on the first day the temperature rose over 50–to air everything out. I always loved that, coming home from school for lunch and finding the windows all wide open, the house looking like a toothless, eyeless caricature of itself, the air sweet and chilly. My mother hated being a housewife and did not cotton to cooking or cleaning. She did the minimums and stuck to the 50’s schedule that most of her friends observed: Monday clean and do laundry; Tuesday iron; Wednesday, volunteer work; Thursday, groceries; Friday, light cleaning (a lick and a promise, is what she called it); Saturday was the night my dad cooked burgers and Sundays we went to my grandparent’s house for dinner. My mother did what she felt she must but mostly without joy and often with many sighs. She did seem to enjoy ironing (which I so don’t get) and would sing while she ironed, in a voice like Ella Fitzgerald. Singing over the ironing and walking in the mountains – those are the times I remember my mother at her happiest. Not cleaning. Never spring cleaning.

Well, it’s sort of spring now and I am sort of spring cleaning. I’ve been putting hours in every week to clean my attic. It has to be done. We’re selling the house and moving to the country.

I’ve lived in this house for 28 years, married husband #2 after living alone here with my daughter for 5 years, moved that husband and his daughter in, had another baby, raised these kids until each one grew their feathers and flew off. Also raised a cockatiel, a parrot, four dogs and numerous gerbils and hamsters in this house. Can you imagine the debris? My attic had become a combination museum, closet (huge closet), and file cabinet. Treasures and cast-offs that have trickled down to me from three generations and two family lines. The leftover objects include outgrown clothes, games, books, and life directions. My very first poem, written at age 10. A couple of Jessie’s baby teeth, nestled inside the newborn bracelet she wore in the nursery: “Baby girl, Marks-Szedziewski, 2-19-78.” An envelope containing a curling wisp of very blond baby hair, Nic’s first haircut, 1988, a battered and faded pink pair of tiny toe shoes (mine, from 1955, I think; although they might be my aunt Jeanne’s). A hair curling iron (great-grandmother Nettie’s, late 1800’s). Aunt Jeanne’s bracelets from the 30’s. So glad I didn’t throw those away. Hundreds of notes from Jessie and from Nic: I Love You, Mommy. Mommy don’t tell anyone but I love you best. Thank you for being my mommy, You are the best Mommy, Next time you go on a trip, take me too. Mommy, I hate camp. Come and get me out of here, please!please!please! Nic’s version of Jingle Bells, written at age 4 with a few backwards letters, words scrawled across the page, Jingle Bells Jingle Bells Jingle all the way, Oh What Fun on Al’s True Ride, On the One on Holken Slay. Jessie’s school trophies, soccer and swimming, her camp and sports t-shirts, Nic’s academic medals for top scores in the state on the ACT and SAT at age 9 and 10, his IQ testing done at Northwestern U when he was 5.

The way I wept when the tester called me and told me the test results.

I wish I had known more back then how to feed his ravenous brain, his wonderful mind. So much I wish I could do over for him.

I will be 63 in a month. The past is truly the past. There are no do-overs and no time left for holding on. Time, instead, for letting go. For boxing up, and throwing away, for going to UPS to send Jessie her soccer and swim team t-shirts, to send Nic his Pokemon card collection. Handing the keepsakes over to my grown-up kids, handing over to them the job of remembering.

In the process of this sorting and cleaning, I’ve had to remind myself again and again to let go not only of the objects but the feelings. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve longed to have my children back in my arms, on my lap, longed for one more night of reading in bed with Jessie at age 7, one more night of long conversation at bedtime with Nic when he was 10. One more chance to see each of them for one hour during each year of their growing-up – one more chance to drink in the sight of them, their wispy hair, freckled faces, braces and missing teeth, to listen to their piping little voices more intently, memorize each one of them even more completely.

I had expected that cleaning out all this old stuff would help me clear the decks for this next chapter of my life, and yes, I guess that’s happening. I had anticipated reminiscing. I hadn’t anticipated the wave upon wave of memories to be so visceral, so wrenching, so expanding and swooping and full of love. I am not only clearing the decks; I am also rejuvenating both myself and the attic. Am going through some kind of death and resurrection here. Turning myself inside out and right side out again. Right side out and I must admit, a little trembly.

Spring cleaning is a piece of cake compared to this.

About Judith: Judith Ford is a psychotherapist and writer who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was red Ravine’s very first guest writer, with the piece 25 Reasons I Write. Judith’s other pieces on red Ravine include lang•widge, Mystery E.R., I Write Because, and PRACTICE – Door – 20min. Spring Cleaning is based on a 15 minute Writing Practice on WRITING TOPIC — SPRING CLEANING.

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PRACTICE: What’s In Front Of Me – 15min

What’s in front of me is a list of the four ingredients for roasted broccoli:

salt
pepper
garlic powder
olive oil

I wonder why I left off the main ingredient.

I wrote the items down in my notebook on Friday night, and on Saturday late in the day I cut the broccoli into florets and used my hand to coat each little tree with the oil mixture.

Little trees, that’s what we call broccoli, Jim and I, as a way to entice the girls to savor it as much as we do. “Eat your little trees,” we might say. On Saturday evening Em asked, “Do you like the top of the tree or the trunk better?” Jim said “the top,” I said “the trunk,” and I thought of the bartender in an Italian restaurant where I worked in college who taught me to peel the thick skin and eat the stalk, it’s the sweetest part. At the close of each night I handed him a bag with all the stalks we would have tossed, and every time I make broccoli I think of him.

What’s in front of me is tap water in a cobalt blue glass on my nightstand, a necklace made of Catholic medallions, the kind you get for Confirmation or First Holy Communion, and lip gloss that belongs to Dee. I used the lip gloss last night, my lips were dry and it was there, bubble gum flavor. It reminded me of Taft Junior High and shiny tacky lips and a big white sweater I wore every day to school in 7th grade.

What’s in front of me are my knees propping up my notebook. I’m tired, too tired to sit up and write. I took Dee and Em on a long walk in the bosque, we left a little after three and we kept going as if we were compelled to find something further on the trail and further yet, we walked and ran, and I had the sense that the woods were alive with pulsating pinks and oranges and browns.

What’s in front of me is the prospect of having to go out in the cold night to pick up a prescription at Walgreens that I meant to call in all weekend. In front of me the strong possibility that I’ll blow it off until tomorrow morning. In front of me Jim saying “you’re not going to make it to the store if you lie down like that.” I smile but don’t stop writing, years of saying “you see me writing in my notebook? — don’t talk to me” have fallen on deaf ears.


-related to Topic Post, WRITING TOPIC – ATTENTION TO DETAIL

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PRACTICE – What’s In Front Of Me – 20min

A woman in navy gators, old-style webbed snowshoes, laced with sinew, bulky and awkward, tucked up under her armpit, slinging waggling ski poles, wrapped in a red knit ski cap with earflaps. I’m reminded that Natalie has a wool cap like that, a Sherpa cap that looks like someone knitted (no, crocheted?) it for her, especially for her. And now I’m remembering a photograph I took of her with dark shades and that Sherpa cap, gloves, or tan mittens. She’s staring right at me, right into the camera. We are walking the dirt road to the white cross behind Mabel Dodge, the one painted by O’Keeffe.

The sun is pale orange, sinking in a crisp winter sky. Wind whistles, clouds surf along a plume of chimney smoke, sky purples, alternating stripes of gray and red, tapered yellowish tails that blind me when I look into the sun to remember how to describe the light. Light is one of the hardest things to write about. Hard to detail. Like trying to capture the feeling of sucking air through a candy-cane striped straw. The kind in the Wendy’s Frosty I had Friday night. It was late, the storm was coming, Liz stayed two hours later at work. Overtime and a feeling of job well done.

Clingy, tawny oak leaves, sucked into winter’s vortex, hanging on by a single, dead stem. Bobbing ash branches over the Mystic River deck. That’s the name of the color of our deck: Behr Mystic River. And the house will be Pot of Cream next year and the trim will be Cloudberry. The color scheme, does it tell you anything about us? Or describe true color?

What’s in front of me, a long, lonely winter. Not the kind of lonely I am used to. Not the long-suffering alone kind of lonely. But the kind of lonely where I have to make decisions that impact me for a long time to come. There are decisions. And then there are consequences of decisions. Will ever the twain meet? I want to know.

Aluminum blue streaks, striated against brown banana orange. Night falls from the West. There is dusting of powder on the north side of the ash. The tree is 3 pronged and I see the sun through the slingshot V of branch 1 and branch 2. Thing 1 and Thing 2 with their shiny red and white hats. The snowshoe woman looked like Thing 3, though I couldn’t see her face. She walked briskly, head down against the wind. It picks up as the clouds disperse, making way for the frigid air of a clear night.

A midsummer night’s dream is only a distant memory. Orange day lilies and sweet bush clover and pansies and black-eyed susans. I took a lemon bristled broom and a fire handled, snow shovel and took care of the deep, mottled driveway, the newly painted deck, the lean and trim gutters that Gene completed on the eve of Saturday’s storm. He was dressed in Carhart brown and sucked on a Marlboro while he deftly tacked the gutter pipe to the old 50’s Masonite siding. “It’s in good shape,” he said. “Usually, this stuff cracks.”

He looked kind of James Deanish (there I go again) with that cigarette dangling from his winter lips, sideburn edges peeking under a red skull cap, body wrapped in the bulk of winter construction in Minnesota. He was the nicest man and I wanted to tell him how much I appreciated contracting with professionals who do what they say they will do and don’t quit until the job is done.

An elongated scar on the south branch of the closest naked oak. It’s about 50 feet from the window I’m staring out as I write. There were two cardinals (aren’t they bulked up finches?) on the three feeders on Friday, one male, one female. The female was an understated caramel, with her tiniest breast feathers ruffling in juts of wind. I wondered if she was cold.

Then the male flitted by in papal crimson and true black. The female had a little blip of red on her crest. I watched them dance back and forth on the oily, black-seeded feeder. The neighbor plugged in his outdoor Christmas tree, twinkling white, while his kids pulled out over thin air, dangling from a wooden seated rope swing hanging from the same scarred oak.

Plus 6 with the windchill. The night’s sunset is reflected in the shiny screen of Liz’s laptop. She oils her hands with a lavender salve I bought at the Albuquerque Growers Market last summer. I feel glad to be alive.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

-related to Topic Post, WRITING TOPIC – ATTENTION TO DETAIL

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