Mental preparation is not possible for the tasks at hand. I do not know where to begin. I skip my early morning workout at the gym, (my latest attempt to regain my health) knowing what lies ahead will be workout enough. This is not basic house cleaning. This is an archeological dig.
The large bottle of rum, enjoyed by the "pirates" who lived and visited here, and almost empty of its contents, I take from on top of the washing machine and place on the pantry shelf next to the sugar and the peanut butter. The last of a large bottle of Coke which served as its mixer was already used to make my Coke float the night before (a questionable choice, I know). Beer glasses, taking up too much space next to the water glasses in the cupboards, threaten to derail my planned progress. Choices for what to keep will have to be made another day. This goes for old shoes, as well.
Load after load of laundry provides the background music for my day: the washing machine beeps until it is ready to go into the wash cycle, stops to beep at 19 minutes, must be turned off and switched to drain and spin, and turned back on to finish out a remaining 12 minutes. Seven minutes of cleaning potential are lost with each load. This cannot be helped and I am grateful for each time a load is completed. I know the day will come when . . . (I would rather not finish this sentence.)
Not wanting to look too closely at anything and invade my sons' privacy, I only do so in order to categorize. VHS tapes may as well go into a box; our machine broke a long time ago. DVDs end up going into the box as well. Books, textbooks primarily, are stacked neatly in a box on the dresser. Clothes are hung up or folded and put into drawers. Some of these shirts have played a lot of soccer.
I am at a disadvantage. Almost all of the shirts are medium, the size of all of the men in the house. It is impossible to remember who originally owned the shirt, to whom it was given, or who took it from the other. I do not know if it was left behind because there was no room for it, no interest, or if the owner cares. The shirts with "Love Machine" and "I Love Soccer Moms" are welcomed finds.
I strip the sheets in preparation for washing and remaking the beds and am momentarily distracted by a hint of Old Spice and the faint scent of boy-turned-man lingering in the room. I take a moment to lie down on the queen-sized bed that we had recently strapped on the top of my vehicle to haul from an apartment where our son no longer lives, into a "new" bedroom, after taking the smaller room to be my workspace. Emotions I had kept carefully in check roll off my face onto the memory foam pad that turns an ordinary bed into the kind one may enjoy at the type of resort we cannot afford to visit.
I go to the front part of the house, where I have not really been since college let out last spring and where our middle son parked his thrift store chair in the center of the room, pulled out the piano bench, put up the music stand and stacked piles of books and other miscellaneous debris around the room. A flute book is found behind the couch; a book entitled Famous Last Words is in a basket.
An expensive, inherited guitar our oldest self-taught himself to play leans silently against the wall. Guitar picks end their game of hide-and-seek, coming out from under placemats, the corners of end tables and bookshelves--little reminders of musical creativity discovered by an economics major.
The speakers most recently plugged into our oldest son's laptop need to be boxed in order to be passed onto his brother. A friend, who felt comfortable enough with us to spend many nights on the couch, is given a memorial place at the end of the hanging rack for the shirt and hat he left behind.
A college honor roll certificate for our middle son is taken off the shelf, along with the paper tube containing a college diploma for the oldest. Youngest brother's prom pictures, including the handkerchief that folded neatly in the pocket of the rental tux along with the clip-on boutonniere--never worn due to a real boutonniere being given--are put away. More certificates, plaques, medals, diplomas, and possibly even more prom pictures may one day take their place.
As the two older sons have become temporary tenants from time to time, leaving their belongings wherever their hearts desire, my husband has done his part not to be left out. I find at least two dozen pencils, pens and markers piled in a corner of the hutch, and in a decorative pottery bowl are tv cords and ear plugs he wears while mowing the lawn. Papers, books, calculators, and various teacher items find their way into a box that goes on the floor behind the door, making room someday for a freshly baked apple pie served with vanilla ice cream (one piece, I promise--ok, maybe two).
Red anniversary roses are dried out, shedding petals and leaves. The live plants have somehow developed an ability to survive the drought-like conditions they unintentionally have been given. They have been raised on a steady diet of alternative indie music, some produced in that very room.
Empty shoe boxes are flattened for recycling, including the box that once contained the solar panel that went with our oldest son, the Peace Corps volunteer, to provide sustained electricity in the foreign land where he now lives. What is not kept is thrown out until layer after layer is dug through and there emerges a dining room table. The end is still broken, as is the arm of a chair; the piano still in need of tuning. Placemats are wiped off and arranged correctly in anticipation of a family dinner.
The couch cover is tucked in and pillows put back in their designated spots. Random found artwork, other creative expressions by the economics major, make their way back to the bedroom for storage. Vacuuming takes care of much of the dog hair and the tiny abandoned bits of our lives scattered from room to room. There are more stains on the carpet than I remember. Wear and tear; lives lived.
The house, more straightened and organized than actually clean, is reclaimed. Two rooms used for bedrooms: the two of us in ours and whoever is here in the other, two bathrooms: one, co-ed and the other for boys only or those brave enough to enter, a small kitchen in which the flavors of life are savored, a family room with a large falling-apart leather sectional from which we all try to watch tv, a front room that provides a place for us to dine together whenever we can, and an adjoining more formal living room which becomes the common area shared by as many as it can hold with far too many books and a piano, which I have gently closed . . . for now.
The large bottle of rum, enjoyed by the "pirates" who lived and visited here, and almost empty of its contents, I take from on top of the washing machine and place on the pantry shelf next to the sugar and the peanut butter. The last of a large bottle of Coke which served as its mixer was already used to make my Coke float the night before (a questionable choice, I know). Beer glasses, taking up too much space next to the water glasses in the cupboards, threaten to derail my planned progress. Choices for what to keep will have to be made another day. This goes for old shoes, as well.
Load after load of laundry provides the background music for my day: the washing machine beeps until it is ready to go into the wash cycle, stops to beep at 19 minutes, must be turned off and switched to drain and spin, and turned back on to finish out a remaining 12 minutes. Seven minutes of cleaning potential are lost with each load. This cannot be helped and I am grateful for each time a load is completed. I know the day will come when . . . (I would rather not finish this sentence.)
Not wanting to look too closely at anything and invade my sons' privacy, I only do so in order to categorize. VHS tapes may as well go into a box; our machine broke a long time ago. DVDs end up going into the box as well. Books, textbooks primarily, are stacked neatly in a box on the dresser. Clothes are hung up or folded and put into drawers. Some of these shirts have played a lot of soccer.
I am at a disadvantage. Almost all of the shirts are medium, the size of all of the men in the house. It is impossible to remember who originally owned the shirt, to whom it was given, or who took it from the other. I do not know if it was left behind because there was no room for it, no interest, or if the owner cares. The shirts with "Love Machine" and "I Love Soccer Moms" are welcomed finds.
I strip the sheets in preparation for washing and remaking the beds and am momentarily distracted by a hint of Old Spice and the faint scent of boy-turned-man lingering in the room. I take a moment to lie down on the queen-sized bed that we had recently strapped on the top of my vehicle to haul from an apartment where our son no longer lives, into a "new" bedroom, after taking the smaller room to be my workspace. Emotions I had kept carefully in check roll off my face onto the memory foam pad that turns an ordinary bed into the kind one may enjoy at the type of resort we cannot afford to visit.
I go to the front part of the house, where I have not really been since college let out last spring and where our middle son parked his thrift store chair in the center of the room, pulled out the piano bench, put up the music stand and stacked piles of books and other miscellaneous debris around the room. A flute book is found behind the couch; a book entitled Famous Last Words is in a basket.
An expensive, inherited guitar our oldest self-taught himself to play leans silently against the wall. Guitar picks end their game of hide-and-seek, coming out from under placemats, the corners of end tables and bookshelves--little reminders of musical creativity discovered by an economics major.
The speakers most recently plugged into our oldest son's laptop need to be boxed in order to be passed onto his brother. A friend, who felt comfortable enough with us to spend many nights on the couch, is given a memorial place at the end of the hanging rack for the shirt and hat he left behind.
A college honor roll certificate for our middle son is taken off the shelf, along with the paper tube containing a college diploma for the oldest. Youngest brother's prom pictures, including the handkerchief that folded neatly in the pocket of the rental tux along with the clip-on boutonniere--never worn due to a real boutonniere being given--are put away. More certificates, plaques, medals, diplomas, and possibly even more prom pictures may one day take their place.
As the two older sons have become temporary tenants from time to time, leaving their belongings wherever their hearts desire, my husband has done his part not to be left out. I find at least two dozen pencils, pens and markers piled in a corner of the hutch, and in a decorative pottery bowl are tv cords and ear plugs he wears while mowing the lawn. Papers, books, calculators, and various teacher items find their way into a box that goes on the floor behind the door, making room someday for a freshly baked apple pie served with vanilla ice cream (one piece, I promise--ok, maybe two).
Red anniversary roses are dried out, shedding petals and leaves. The live plants have somehow developed an ability to survive the drought-like conditions they unintentionally have been given. They have been raised on a steady diet of alternative indie music, some produced in that very room.
Empty shoe boxes are flattened for recycling, including the box that once contained the solar panel that went with our oldest son, the Peace Corps volunteer, to provide sustained electricity in the foreign land where he now lives. What is not kept is thrown out until layer after layer is dug through and there emerges a dining room table. The end is still broken, as is the arm of a chair; the piano still in need of tuning. Placemats are wiped off and arranged correctly in anticipation of a family dinner.
The couch cover is tucked in and pillows put back in their designated spots. Random found artwork, other creative expressions by the economics major, make their way back to the bedroom for storage. Vacuuming takes care of much of the dog hair and the tiny abandoned bits of our lives scattered from room to room. There are more stains on the carpet than I remember. Wear and tear; lives lived.
The house, more straightened and organized than actually clean, is reclaimed. Two rooms used for bedrooms: the two of us in ours and whoever is here in the other, two bathrooms: one, co-ed and the other for boys only or those brave enough to enter, a small kitchen in which the flavors of life are savored, a family room with a large falling-apart leather sectional from which we all try to watch tv, a front room that provides a place for us to dine together whenever we can, and an adjoining more formal living room which becomes the common area shared by as many as it can hold with far too many books and a piano, which I have gently closed . . . for now.
