I was cleaning yesterday.
This is not something I am given to doing often. It’s dangerous, don’t you know? With all the writing there is to be done, cleaning tempts me with its mindlessness and its (ohsobrief) sense of accomplishment. During the week when the kids are in school, I avoid it as absolutely best I can.
And really, when tempted to clean, one should ask oneself the point. Like this: What is, in fact, the point of cleaning? Someone wise has said that it’s the very same thing as threading beads on a string that has no knot at the end. I think we all can understand that.
(Truth be told, I do clean. I like cleaning (see the mindlessness, above, and the sense of satisfaction), and I like things to be clean. But a dustpan just doesn’t get one very far in, say, accumulating chapters of one’s book. So there’s that.)
But the real danger of cleaning– cleaning anything– is how it leads to more cleaning. Know what I mean? Take yesterday, for example. I was replacing some displaced furniture (and this was because we’d had the carpet cleaned– see how cleaning leads to cleaning?) and I realized that the piece I was replacing was in want of dusting (everything is in want of dusting All The Time, a fact I find tedious). I fetched the dusting materials (which should be called undusting materials, thank you, Amelia Bedelia) and proceeded to dust and polish the wooden chair, and then the little wooden hibachi (see Japanese furniture) that stands next to it and then– here’s your trouble– the painted wooden trim next to said items.
At first it was just a lick and promise: a little rub, a little extra. Spot’s gone.
And then it was more: Look! There’s a spot above this spot! And another! And another! And before you know it, I’ve given up kneeling by the hibachi and am on my feet, reaching over my head at the fingerprints (fingerprints!) up there near the top of the molding.
Heavens, but my children are tall!
And now, looking at them like this in the full light of day, I am given to undeniably confront the seeming system of fingerprints that extends all along said molding, from one end of the trim to the other.
Again?! I am thinking. And Still?! I am thinking.
This began to be a problem when William was about four– or five, maybe– and he realized that he could stand on that chair and take hold of this molding and then sort of shimmy himself along the entire length of this ledge (or trim, or molding, or whathaveyou. I am not going to give you a floor plan. You just have to bear with me). He did this for a while, and he did it often: it was part of his being four– or five, and discovering abilities and energies he hadn’t known he had.
I am sure we discouraged it. The Drop– had it occurred at the time– would have been (maybe) significant, and besides, he left all those fingerprints (why weren’t his hands clean?).
But Will is difficult to discourage. I can’t say why. I can say that I have said More Times Than I Could Possibly Count, “Do Not Play With Balls In The House.” It makes no difference. These days, the command has become tired sarcasm: “I’m sure I’ve never mentioned this to you before, Will, and it seems inconceivable to all of us that I should have overlooked mentioning it or that I would even begin to mention it to you now, but here goes: Please Do Not Play With Balls In The House.”
He keeps forgetting. Look! There’s a ball in the living room! What’s a ball for?
In much the same way that he kept forgetting my recommendation that he not hang on the molding when he was four and five. Until the day he was six and he partially Pulled the Molding Down.
That was not a good day.
But the hanging on the molding has long been a non-issue. He can stand on his own two feet now and grab it readily in both hands– something that he often does (I had not realized this) when he comes into the room and is chatting with me or his father, or maybe (so it would seem) when he is considering watching something on t.v., or even (does he?) when casually passing through the room.
I don’t know when he does it. I don’t think about it anymore. But standing there at the edge of the molding, undusting and polishing supplies in hand, I noticed that he does it All The Time, and there were the fingerprints to prove it.
What’s a mother to do?
I wiped them away– a task that is significantly more difficult (on lots of levels) than putting the prints there in the first place, if only (so definitely) that I am So Much Shorter now than he is.
Yes, I wiped them away. And as I did, I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t. He is sixteen, after all, and just about halfway through his junior year in high school. That’s not a lot of time left for putting more fingerprints there– and, to be perfectly honest, I think I kind of like having them.
They are Will’s fingerprints, after all.
I thought about that as I wiped, and I decided that wiping now is the right thing, because he will certainly (Most Certainly) replace them. Call me crazy, but I wanted to wipe them away because, for now, anyway, I’m still threading beads on that knotless string. Will is still here at home with us, and he will still play with balls in the house, and he will grab that molding again.
So I wiped away those fingerprints again because this time, at least, it’s not for the last time.
It will be gone before you know it. The fingerprints on the wall appear higher and higher. Then suddenly they disappear. — Dorothy Evslin
