At 18, I stayed up all night all summer. Of course, I slept by day, but every evening
at 11 p.m., I went on duty as a personal care assistant. I was working at a home for people with
severe developmental challenges, folks on feeding tubes, with muscles atrophied
from disuse, for whom a grunt might be a milestone in communication. After checking each resident, changing
diapers, rotating limp bodies to new positions to prevent bedsores, mopping
floors, and gathering laundry, I’d make my way to the nurses’ station. There the other women pulled out their craft
projects, knitting, crocheting, and gabbing their way through the long
night. Ears wide open and fingers
fumbling with my half-finished dishcloth, I listened to stories of shopping
adventures and struggles with spouses. What shocked me most was Mary’s
admission that every night, after her kids were in bed and before she went to
work, she got down on her hands and knees to mop the kitchen floor. What unholy hooligans she must have, I
thought, who track mud so ungratefully onto her gleaming tiles. Or what high standards of cleanliness she
ascribed to, that she would be offended by specks of dust not yet gathered into
lagomorphan lumps.
At 36, a lifetime later, I crouch on bended knee. Wet rag in
hand, I scrub away the remnants of supper, the scribbles of marker that didn’t
stay in the lines, the splatters of milk and juice now dried into circles of
grime. My standards are not particularly high, nor are my children, now
sleeping, particularly messy, so this ritual is repeated not daily but at
random intervals through the month. I
always start in the same corner and work my way around the table, moving the
chairs just barely, imagining them still heavy with their occupants (or, quite
honestly, too lazy to do the job right and relocate them to the other
room). I kneel in the silence, putting
to right, focusing not on the likelihood that more milk will spill tomorrow,
but on this smudge, this crumb, this drop of wine smeared across these
floorboards, now sanctified.
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