Ersatz Citrus
April 28 2013


I know how futile
it seems
cleaning house,
making your bed
only to sleep in it.
At best, a momentary pause
in life's tendency
toward chaos.
Because life descends
into disorder,
as implacably

as gravity.

But in its defence
there is simple pleasure
in physical effort, the Zen of routine.
In modest ambition;
because it can only be so clean,
no utopian dreams
of perfection.

A task
you complete with your hands,
and ends
with the satisfaction
of something tangible.
When you can stand back, basking
in order
the illusion of control.
When you let slip
your bourgeois pride
that the things you possess
the people
with whom you spend your life
are taken care.

My mother kept a clean house,
even with all those boys.
She was not the touchy-feely type
who could easily say
"I love you",
3 words that come and go
and sometimes mess you up
depending.

Not that the house matters now.
Because cleanliness
is an ephemeral art;
if not Godly, then comforting,
with gleaming hardwood floors
that smell of polished wax
ersatz citrus.

So her clean house
was incidental.
Except that's how I remember it;
a good woman
taking care.
 

I'm editing this the morning after-- transcribing into type from my impenetrable hand-writing, tweaking the lines. And totally surprised to find how much I like it! Because it was written incredibly quickly, on impulse, and out of thin air -- waiting for the spaghetti to boil, unwatched; and hemmed-in by the timer, about to go off.

Actually, now that I think about it, not quite out of thin air. I had been listening to a podcast of author, humorist, and diarist David Sedaris being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air. Apparently, he’s a bit of a compulsive cleaner. I suspect this interview was circling around my head as I sat down to write, and led me to reflect on my own penchant for neatness.

I used to be a "neat-freak" -- unpleasantly obsessive. I blamed this on my mother. And she, it turns out, blames hers: the mother (my grandmother Esther) who raised her in the early 20th century, when the germ theory of everything held sway, and when women were judged on how well they kept house. So it goes, the sins of the mothers. But with the sensible gift of age, not to mention a new dog, I've learned to let go, and that the world goes serenely on, despite my laxity.

We are not a demonstrative family, either. Although in old age my mother has learned to say -- without self-conscious, hesitation, or irony -- "I love you"; me, not so much. But actions speak with equal, if not more, sincerity; and this is how I choose to shape my understanding of the past.