The Cleaning Gene that Escapes Me

I would love to be one of those people who has an art for cleaning or is even good at cleaning. What you say? There is an art involved, or a talent? Well I say yes to both, and sadly I do not not have either.

I have witnessed with my own eyes people that are blessed with these abilities. Really I have.

First let me say, I am the youngest of seven children. Because of this my Mother had help. And by help I mean someone came in and cleaned and ironed everything (sheets, pillowcases, hankies), and cooked dinner for us.

I literally thought either beds made themselves or there was a bed making fairy that came while I was away at school. Each and everyday I would get up, not make my bed, not see anyone make my bed, but come home to a nicely made bed and clean room.

The other phenomenon that happened at our house was when the "help" was the eldest sister (on the weekends), she would send us all outside and lock the doors until she was finished. When she let us back in she would tie us up in the basement until Mom and Dad returned (okay I embellished that part, but if she would have thought of it back then she would have).

Fast forward one hundred years, give or take fifty, and here I am still not blessed with the cleaning gene. Please trust me when I say I have tried. I have read books, like "The Queen of Clean, "The Queen of Laundry", blogs by fly lady or something named close to that who suggests at least keeping your sink clean so that when you are overwhelmed you can go and look at it and feel a sense of satisfaction. 


Uhmm, that did not work for me either.

She also has a fifteen minute a day program. Tackle a stack of anything for fifteen minutes each day. I thought this was an excellent idea until I started it. 


As I found a paper in the stack that needed to be filed in another room and I took it to said room and filed it, then found something in said room that belonged in another room,  I took it to that room then started working on the stack in that room, well you get the picture. Most of my fifteen minutes was taken up walking from room to room with one paper removed from each stack and redeposited elsewhere. 


I think this idea does not work for those of us with a touch of ADD.

Then I read the most horrific of all books. I can't remember the name or the author and I don't want to. I trembled with inadequacy for weeks after reading it. Her idea of doing laundry is for it to be washed, dried, folded, ironed, and put away. All at once. Soup to nuts.

As a single mom, working full time, with a son involved in every sport in season and every ministry at church, my idea of finished laundry is washed, in the dryer, and when I needed something out of it I hit the dewrinkle button let it run a few minutes and we were good to go.

She also suggested having a folder filled with lists of things to do. And when and if you sat down in the evening without darning, hemming, needlepoint, or crafting you should cross off and add to your lists. 


When I finished reading this book my dog hated it as much as I did, so he ate it. And I am not embellishing this one. I read it in one day, got up to leave the room for a minute, came back and it was demolished. 


I loved that dog he "got" me.

I will confess that not many in my immediate family have this cleaning gene, mainly for the same reason I do not, we had "help". However, most of them were smart enough to marry the gene in. 


I have many sister in laws with this gene. But there is one in particular who stands heads above anyone's sisters in laws. She is the Mother of All there is Clean, she is the Clean Queen, she should have a crown and a sash and a sceptre and a chair like Queen Mother of England has.

She will walk into a room grab a chair, a cloth, and fifteen minutes later it looks like you have a brand spanking new ceiling fan. She then goes on with her day like nothing taxing transpired.

When I clean a ceiling fan, I get a ladder, the most expensive, toxic cleaner for ceiling fans available, gloves, a mask and I go to town. When I am finished, I have hit my head on the blades several times, have more grime and dirt on me than the cloth, smell like toxic cleaning solution, am sweat drenched and my fan looks like it has not been touched, except for the blood from where it wounded my head. 


Then I take a nap.

Once, my Mother and I were at this sister in laws house and she was cleaning for her own enjoyment. I watched with excitement thinking I might learn a cleaning secret from her or even get one by osmosis. 


She gets out her Swiffer, no pad, no Swiffer "juice" as we call it in my house, just the body of the thing. She attaches a cloth to the bottom and squirts some Soft Scrub on the floor and swipes it a few times. Her floors glistened like that gum commercial about cleaning up a filthy mouth. 


You know the one at the end where the girl smiles and the bling blinds you?

I think to myself, at last, I know a trick! I promptly come back to my home state, undress my Swiffer, attach a cloth, use the Soft Scrub I bought just for this occasion and went to town. 


As I streaked about the Soft Scrub on my tile and created more of a mess than I had, I laid down on the ground, had a tantrum, thought about saying some cuss words, then arose and admitted defeat. I redressed my Swiffer, moved the dirt around, and called it a day.

Once again, I can not even compete with this one on the cleaning gene.

However, there is one gene I have that she does not. I can tan.

I can get a good tan. So here she is with pretty much milquetoast skin (think of the pretty, pretty Princess Snow White), few wrinkles and no age spots.

With my tan I have all of those, however when I smile my tan makes my teeth look like the girl in the gum commercial, so at least I have something that shines!

Events that change a person

Recently, I lie awake, tucked into my comfy bed, as the thought of remarkable event in my life was looping through my mind, irritatingly looping and looping, keeping me from sleep.

The very first time I can remember being irreparably changed in the deepest recesses of my soul, happened in college. This was the hour that I found my voice and how loud and often that voice is used to accomplish productive results.

A friend, my best friend, was missing. Not just missing, missing for an entire night. Back in those days this was not the event it is today. In fact the campus police decided without justification that she must have run off to have an abortion. Happens all the time, they said.

Remember, this was my best friend. I knew stuff about her that no one else knew, as she did about me. This would be a huge event, discussion, round table meeting of the besties on what to do and how to handle this development. It would never include disappearing without one of us going with her or knowing about it.

We banded together and posted her photo in every dorm and Fraternity (there were no Sorority houses on our campus) with a plea to contact one of us if she was sighted. We established command central, a friends duplex, we went on the offensive and by that, I mean aggressively went on the offensive. These actions all expressed our collective voice on the matter very loudly.

Quickly this was discouraged and the posters taken down. We were informed that we were creating alarm on campus. Did not want to alarm the campus did we, because tsk tsk, surely she was off doing something she did not want us to know. It was an attempt to silence our voice.

We found her car but not her. We reported all the details to the campus police. They seemingly wrote all the information down and displayed adequate concern.

Later, after I had called the city police and the National Guard (I was serious about this, I tell you), we returned to the campus police. Imagine how disappointed we were when we found no written record was available from our previous visit. Seems they just wanted us to feel like they heard us.

Calls were made to anyone that might have a clue to where she could be. We combed the parking lot where her car was found, for anything, a piece of hair, jewelry, something from her purse. A friend even pried open her car trunk to make sure she was not in there.

Calls were made to her parents and my Mom went to be with them to tell them the news. They had many questions and were in total disbelief and confusion on whom to believe the campus police or the friends that knew their daughter for years and years and had very close relationships with her.

The friend's voices won out, the parents made the police take a real report, the flyer's went back up, the campus was alerted.

Finally after eighteen hours my friend was returned, harmed, irreparably damaged, frightened, forever changed, but alive. She was alive. Many of our worst thoughts and fears had happened, but the worst of all was not. She was alive.

And we were happy and hoped that these events started a change on how college campuses everywhere handled missing students.  Maybe our voices would be acknowledged now.

When she was found, she wanted her friends, a cigarette, and a coke. All the things at the time the Diva's did together. It was her comfort, her security blanket, the return to her normalcy that helped get her through.

We never talk about it anymore, but we all know, we all remember, and we were all changed in ways that can never be expressed. And like a whisper in the night, the terror momentarily will haunt me, but quickly passes, and even more quickly as the years pass. And then I wonder how loud and frequent her whisper is and how long it lasts for her.

There is joy in knowing the Amber Alert system is in place, and police take reports seriously, and every time I see a missing person information scroll across the screen I first get a shiver of fear, but know that times have changed for the better when it comes to missing persons, and I thank God for that and I thank God my friend, who is still my friend, and is alive.