Good morning, friends! Rise and shine! Let’s start our day with some inspirational clichés. Then we’ll hit the dirt and do 20 push-ups. Are you with me? But, first, I must tell you something really cool. I’ve been practicing mindfulness. You know, that thing where you appreciate every pitiful little moment just as it happens? Even if it means that, while you are chock full of mindfulness for that sweet little twig in the street, you get hit by a truck?
OK! And now here are your inspirational cliches of the day. A bird in the sand is worth two in the tush. An idle mind is the devil’s beach ball. Beat the living daylights out of someone! Oops, I meant beat swords into plowshares. I am so hostile! And, finally, beware of Greeks bearing gifts…
Mindfulness and Your Flecks
Yeah, so, this morning I decided to do mindfulness with my food flecks, those things that fall out of your mouth, willy nilly, when you brush your teeth. Why did I choose flecks instead of, say, snowflakes? Because flecks are REAL, baby. They have LIVED. Flecks have been chewed on and spit out and yet they rise again to dance and swirl in the sink. And, eventually, like us humans, they wend their way down the drain, slowly, steadily and surely.
As the tiny flecks of food spilled from my mouth, I admired their pretty colors, textures and shapes and the images formed by the bits of food as they moved two and fro, pushed gently by the flowing water. I was one with my flecks. And then I went to check my email. About two hours later, I realized that the sweet wreckage of my breakfast was still in the sink.
When I ran upstairs to check out the situation, the sink was clean. God works in mysterious ways. Amen. {Moral #1: If you wait long enough, somebody else will take care of it.}
Anyhoohoo, when the whole pandemic thing was getting started, many of my friends said they were going to start spring cleaning ASAP. They were all very juiced up about it. “My husband and I clean our house together every Friday night,” one friend said. “Then we have a glass of wine with almonds and brie.” “That’s exceptionally boring,” I thought. “Wouldn’t they rather go to the movies?”
Besides, every time you clean something, don’t you just make something else dirty?
Deep Cleaning on a Deeper Level
But then I started to think about cleaning on a deeper level. A level of goddess-like mindfulness, to be exact. To be more exact, I’ve officially been reflecting upon it since March 13, 2020. “Does cleaning apply to me?” “What do we really mean by ‘cleaning’?” “Is cleanliness next to Godliness?” “Can I make cleaning into a drinking game: three shots of Sheep Dog Peanut Butter Whiskey per toilet bowl?”
Thinking about cleaning brings back fond memories of my early years. Come join me in a walk down memory lane.
Until I was 12, my mother was a housewife. She did the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and laundry. I supervised. One day, when I came home from school, I noticed that the trash basket from my bedroom was in the middle of the doorway.
“That’s weird,” I thought. I looked inside. I could see the papers, gum wrappers, and tissues I’d deposited there over the past few days. It was quite full. “But why is the trash basket sitting there?” I looked at it. I thought about it. Then, figuring it was none of my business, I stepped over it.
I don’t remember how long the trash basket remained there, but I guess it was until my mother gave up and emptied it.{Moral #2: If you wait long enough, somebody else will take care of it.}
And Then There’s Cooking
When I was 16, my father sat me down for a talk. “It’s time you learned to cook,” he said. I turned around to see who he was talking to. Oh. Me. “Why?” “Because someday you will get married and your husband will expect you to make dinner.” Such a thought had never occurred to me. Why would I do that? I never had mindfulness about cooking. No way! “Nope.” “What do you mean?” “We’re gonna do take out.” And that was the end of that.
Fast forward: I got married for the first time when I was 66. Imagine if I’d learned to cook way back then. And then never had a husband to cook for over the next 50 years?
But I did sorta try. It was about 2002, when I was living in my NYC studio. Rigo, our Guatemalan super with a penchant for beaded necklaces and pinky rings, offered me a new stove. I was thrilled. I don’t know why. Before it was installed, I removed the books and papers I had stored in the old one.
When the new stove arrived, I was delighted that not only would my books and papers fit nicely inside, but also a shoebox with my 1973 tax returns. Six months later, I decided to cook in the oven. I took out the books, papers and shoe box, which, believe you me, was a big job.
The Mindfulness of Smoke
I put a platter of tilapia into the oven and turned it on. {Note to readers: I did not follow a recipe.} Suddenly I noticed smoke billowing from the oven. I ran to the intercom and called Rigo. “Help, the stove is on fire!” Rigo dashed up to the eighth floor, fire extinguisher in hand, and into my kitchen. He looked and sniffed and, then, turning to me, said, “That’s not smoke. It’s dust.”
He threw open the oven door, peered inside, and said, “It’s dusty. Why is it dusty? Have you ever used it?” “Well, um, no.” This is not to say I never cleaned when I lived in my studio. I just had my own method – the “tissue method.” If I couldn’t use a tissue to clean something, then it didn’t need to be cleaned. did once try using a mop. But what I could never figure out was, if you got the mop dirty from mopping the floor and then rinsed it in a bucket of water, the water got dirty.
So when you took the mop out of the dirty water, you would be wiping the floors with a dirty mop. Does this make sense to anyone? It certainly didn’t make sense to me so I took the logical next step: I gave up. I always did, however, keep my apartment neat – no clutter – and, to tell you the truth, no one who ever visited me ever looked around and screamed, “Aaarrrghhh. Your place is soooo dirty!!!”
{Moral #3: If you just keep everything where it’s supposed to be, and never move it, you never have to clean.}
{Moral #4: If you engage in mindfulness while cooking, cleaning or other domestic chores, you will never get these chores done. So no mindfulness while being a domestic goddess!}
And, remember, if things get dirty, just use tissues.
Illustration of woman in bathtub by OpenClipart-Vectors on Pixabay
