It began simply. Over Sunday lunch my mum was trying to tell visiting family members just what she’d done the previous day. However, she just couldn’t bring to her mind the words necessary to describe exactly what she had achieved. Sitting beside her I felt deep sympathy because I too have reached an age when perfectly simple words do not bubble up when you most need them. My mum adopted her usual approach, in these circumstances, she pointed out of the window and said “I painted the thing below the kitchen window outside”. The ‘thing’ of course was the windowsill. She had spent a happy hour painting the mucky grey windowsill a blistering white colour. In fact, this cleanness she had appreciated so much she had decided to paint another object white as well.
Sitting at the table, I felt quite sorry for my mum when the word ‘windowsill’ wouldn’t come up and wanted to rush in and provide it. But I have learnt that when you start to talk for the person, though you think you’re helping, you’re actually sabotaging them. Longer term they start to cease using this tricky language business and rely on you more and more for translation purposes. However, having struggled to describe the windowsill paint job the other painted object was even trickier. I felt genuine sympathy as I couldn’t remember the name of the thing she had painted either. So, I explained, she had painted white the cement inside the tyre wheel holding up the post with the clothes hanging above it in the garden. I had forgotten the word ‘rotary washing line’.
Such is life at present! Just when I begin to feel sorry that life is so confusing and tricky for my mum I discover that life has snuck up behind me and is proving equally problematic for me. This amuses my mum who often tells me triumphantly, “You become like the people you live with, you know!” It doesn’t stop with language quirks.
Last week I discovered my mum has started spring cleaning. I should’ve guessed when the week before she started painting the windowsill. But to be honest it was only when she cleaned all the shelves in the sunroom and all the material on a nearby trolley and the windows that I suddenly tweaked that this spring clean was a real thing she had begun. I remonstrated with her that this is the end of September, no time to start a spring clean, but she smiled and said confidently, “Better early than late!” Since then she has gone on to tackle the kitchen cupboards, the large corridor storage cupboard and all the drawers. It is exhausting just watching her busily hauling out, cleaning and rearranging stuff.
By the fourth day I was caught up in her wake and I started cleaning the bathroom even removing shower doors to do it properly. It is a contagious thing this spring cleaning. The problem is once you start you suddenly realise how dirty everything has become. In comparison to the sparking clean surface you have wiped, the tiles above it appear yellow and grease stained. Once the walls have been bleached into shiny submission the skirting boards take on a disgusting complexion. And so, it goes on! Having cleaned some tiny aspect of the house with much effort we both have a ridiculous evening show and tell session. She shows me what she has done, pulling open cupboard doors to display ordered shelves neatly stacked and I point out my cleaning achievements to her. I suspect with time this will grow into routine mutual applause at both our efforts.
At first, I was annoyed especially when my mum was totally exhausted and stiff with pain after each cleaning frenzy but now I can see why she is enjoying it. There is a deep satisfaction from seeing the visible improvement around one. We catch each other examining our own work already done with a slightly smug air. There is a momentum developing and I hesitate to say it but we seem to be getting slightly better and try to raise our game with each passing day. There is also the deep satisfaction that this spring clean has got to be the earliest we have ever attempted. For once we feel we have a head start on life, after all it is months and months until spring. The other joyous discoveries are that you don’t need to know the name of something to clean it and we are gradually finding things we thought we lost.
“It’s time for a spring cleaning of your thoughts, it’s time to stop to just existing it’s time to start living.”
Steve Maraboli
