It’s Going Well
I had a text message that Dennis and his grandson had left Silver Bay at 8:20 this morning. I moved forward with my fall cleaning. Mom had that as a part of my growing up each and every spring and fall.
Quite a few years ago, it must have been ten or more years ago, as I was still working, Michael and JoAnn and Mom spent the weekend at Finnland to visit Mom’s brother Melvin. Michael and I had it worked out that they would leave Mom’s house key in a certain spot. They planned on leaving early Friday morning. I had planned on taking a vacation day from work. I would swoop in shortly there after and do a bit of elfing. Mom had mentioned so often she was weary of the green on her living room walls. With paint, brushes and whatever I thought I would need I would get the living room painted while Mom was taking a weekend up north.
What I learned about my Mom did not surprise me. Mom and Dad lived on a gravel township road. The
house did not have air conditioning . . . they used windows and breezes to stay comfortable. As I went from wall to wall I taped up the mop board as I went to keep paint off of it. There was no dust on the ledge of the board. There was no dust on anything in the living room. Mom ran a tidy home . . . and not just when she knew company was coming.
I don’t mind doing the total house thing in the fall and spring. It’s satisfying to touch and feel what I have in my home. I can decide if it will remain where I picked it up from, decide if it is worthy of remaining, or it may be moved to a new spot. I do not have a lot of knickknacks sitting around. What there is, I most likely have an emotional attachment to it. Not to worry, I still miss a thing or two that wasn’t done as it should have been.
That last little bit of information was driven home just this last spring. Carrie, Megan and Nicholas came to spend a Sunday. Nicholas doesn’t miss a single thing. He asked me what the password was for the tablet. As I looked it up for him . . . “Grammie, that pillow that is in the old rocking chair is really dusty. I pounded on it and dust flew.” What a little fart! He was right of course. I did look to see if he also had white gloves in his back pocket. I had totally forgotten about it until today when I was cleaning in the west porch. I looked at that pillow . . . really looked at it. It was a needlepoint pillow I had done when . . . Nicholas’ mom was about five. The pillow went into the clothes dryer with a very damp towel and a 
clean pair of my tennis shoes. Non the worse for ware of the wool yarn used for the design, it is ready for Nicholas to have at it again when he comes the next time. It did bring to mind when for some reason he had crawled under one of our beds and came out looking like a wooly little lamb. His hair had brushed across the box springs of the bed. Gotta keep that kid around for the quality control inspections. As I mentioned, I think I am doing the cleaning up to snuff, until a squirrely little kid comes along and lets the air out of my tires.