[DRAFT FORM]
This morning I vacuumed. Some weeks I do, some weeks I do not. On the continuum of household cleaning tasks ranging from NEVER DO (“ND” – example: washing windows) to ALWAYS DO (“AD” – example: washing dishes) vacuuming lies about three-quarters of the way towards AD. Vacuuming must be done from time to time. I want and hope to do other things, but it is so familiar and relatively easy to put them off. I have been saying to myself: “I will dust during spring break. I will scrub the shower curtain and bathroom tiles. I will get rid of the things that have been set aside in get-rid piles.” But that last task isn’t cleaning so much as getting things organized, getting things done - or, more ominously, being done with things. I have always placed a great deal of importance on GETTING THINGS DONE. My success in this arena is variable. Being done with things? That, too, is elusive.
Today I had a very long list of things to do: reading and writing for the course I am taking, typing observations, writing this week’s curriculum and parent letter, typing up notes from a recent ‘home visit’ (it took place in a car situated in a no-parking zone…with the radio on, perhaps a story for another time.) Instead I pulled the vacuum cleaner from the little berth it occupies beneath the linen shelves and I began to clear the floor of its accidental, transitory details. Everything looks quite singular and significant just before it disappears into the wide, low nozzle of the vacuum hose: one dozen triangular blue scraps from the most recent of Hanauta’s continual sewing projects, one popcorn kernel from last week’s soup + popcorn supper, one hard golden grain of rice – provenance unknown, one tiny brown wooden bead – ditto, one sliver of cellophane from a packet of chewing gum, one cirrocumulus hair cloud. Sometimes I inadvertently suck up something of actual significance (to me, to this household): miniature things that belong to the armamentarium of Hanauta’s play. During my last bout of vacuuming I heard a suspicious clatter as I vacuumed in the dimness of Hanauta’s windowless room but I didn’t check. Today I saw, just a moment too late, a toy spatula – it was drawn to the nozzle, raced up the firm slope of the tube and then plunged down the flexible hose into the heap of oblivion within the canister. It is silver and black, the sort of spatula used for flipping pancakes (as opposed to the kind needed to urge the last of the pancake batter from the bowl.)
“Hanauta,” I said, apologetically, “I vacuumed up the little spatula.” “WHY didn’t you ask me to pick up my toys before you vacuumed?” she yowled. Why indeed. Why don’t I ask people to take care of their things - or of me. I might have just kept silent, let her be done with the toy - as she will soon be whether she knows it or not. Instead I promise, “I will find it. I will get it." The words, rising on my breath, set my heart rate increasing as I visualized the long and detailed, two-column, bullet-point to-do list that awaited me.
Unlocking the canister door I lifted the small, heavy, rather uterine bag from the vacuum and brought it to the kitchen floor. I chose a cake pan to catch the dust and crouched, examining the contents of the bag as if it were a peek-inside Easter egg. I couldn’t see the spatula, nor feel it as I crooked my index finger down, over, up, around. The resistance of the material within the bag, as I began to pull it free, surprised me. There were no longer any number of discrete, significant items, just one sinewy, gray, cord-like mass, flecked with paper scraps but made mostly of hair and skin, I would suppose. Silvery, powdery, cakey dust fell coolly into the pan as I dragged this strange rope from its matrix. The strain as this large thing emerged from a small aperture was more suggestive of birth than excretion. I kept wondering: “What is this like? What is this about?” Inside the heavy ply I found two precious things – surely the objects I had heard rattle in the tube last time. They are a brunette laundry lady – her legs broken off at the knees – and a tall, svelte blonde in a blue suit, tiny figures for architectural models that a former boyfriend gave to Hanauta several years ago. Important to me both because I still mourn the loss of that man, and as they fit so well into my personal mythology – I am the laundry lady, hands and arms immobilized as they grip the heavy basket, and legs broken off at the knees by my desire to GET THINGS DONE and my failure to be done with things. The blonde woman is – well, she is the person who doesn’t need to hold onto a basket full of linens, she is intrinsically good whether she gets things done or not. The spatula is just a spatula. I despaired of finding it, gently shaking the shaggy, shedding mass and probing it with my fingers to dislodge the tiny object. I didn’t find it there and threw the main load into the trash can. I was about to empty the cake pan when I saw, glinting quietly under the ashen dust, the little spatula. Hanauta was delighted and I was, too. Cleaning is joyous containting elements of preserving what would otherwise have been lost or wasted, suggesting that what once was lost can now be found, offering an intimation of resurrection (a reprieve from oblivion if not immortality outright.) Cleaning is joyous, too, as it sets a boundary defining a sort of freedom: 'we are well rid of all that is rightly washed, shaken, thrown away.'
Outside, the trees have arrived at their most perfect moment, when what seemed lost within them – their very life – begins to emerge. The buds are spear heads, mace heads, sistrums, and tassles, singular, significant; their silhouettes, burred or satiny, please me infinitely; I crane back to see them plotted easily on the length of dark branches above me and the dense stasis of trunk. I want to stay poised at this point of equinox, with everything at its newest, emergent. (Even, recently the moon seemed to linger in its early sliver.) I have a desire to preserve small things, least of things, first of and last of things, to honor and know them. Evidently. Oh, getting done, getting rid. Even faced with my laundry basket full of heavy-stranded obligation, there are tiny, real glints of a gracious, beautiful enormity. Thank God, thank everything for March, and trees and daughters and the vacuum cleaner.
