Tumbleweeds of dust and hair roll lazily across the floor, no longer hiding under chairs or in corners. They’ve staked their claim and live out in the open now. They know it. I know it. I shrug and accept it. To banish the tumbleweeds would mean dragging the vacuum hose up from the garage and pushing the brush across every surface and into every crevice and the truth is, I’m tired. Why go to all that trouble when we have no visitors, no guests to impress with our ability to keep squalor at bay, and besides, the tumbleweeds aren’t hurting anybody.
The laundry is relentless. I don’t understand it because we aren’t going anywhere and we’re not doing anything and yet not a day goes by without me throwing a quick load into the washer or precariously juggling armfuls of clean clothes up the stairs because Poppy has turned the laundry basket into a train for her stuffies again. Our pile of clean clothes grows until Mount Laundry looms and shames me into folding and putting it all away, only to be met with full hampers again the next day.
I have not meal-planned in weeks. Maybe months. What is time? We’re existing on local blueberries and barbecued hamburgers and corn on the cob but the cool mornings and earlier nights are a warning of the seasons to come. Soon we won’t have local summer fruits and veg to tempt us and keep our bellies (and souls) happy and I’ll have to figure out how to feed these people again. These people who have growing bones and expanding palates and need three square meals and 87 snacks a day.
I am a terrible housekeeper and not a great employee and this week Poppy looked me straight in the face and said “I hate you.” And she meant it. I know this isn’t forever but it’s for now and it’s hard. I want to do well. I want to earn ten gold stars for keeping a sparkling home void of clutter, not a tumbleweed to be found. I want people to marvel at how I’m excelling at doing my job while keeping small kids entertained and engaged in educational activities during a global pandemic. I want to feel like I’m doing something that matters, not barely holding it all together with duct tape and tenacity.
Today I took my dishwasher apart to try to find the source of a funny smell. I watched YouTube videos and unscrewed parts and bleached filter screens and I only had to ask for help once when I didn’t have the physical strength necessary to snap a piece back together. For an hour I didn’t think about how Grady is going to go back to school in a month or how Poppy, our little extrovert, suffered all those months without the stimulation of seeing people outside our tiny family bubble. I didn’t think about case counts or how BC’s curve, once gloriously flat, has rapidly changed into an uphill climb. I didn’t think about Thanksgiving or my birthday or Christmas, or how my family hasn’t been together since we celebrated my dad’s and brother’s birthdays in February. I thought about finding the damn smell. I wiped pink slime, scrubbed rubber seals, and managed to put everything back together without messing it up. I even swept up the tumbleweeds that gathered around my knees while I knelt by the dishwasher and worked. Today, for an hour, I earned ten gold stars for keeping my hands and mind occupied, and it was bliss.