A Little Slice of My Crazy

Tonight, my mother flies into town for the holidays.

I've been cleaning for two days.

Nothing frantic, mind you, but I'm taking special care to ensure that some of my junk drawers have been pruned and that my linen closets are neatly stacked with uniformly folded towels.

It's not that my mum is going to don a white glove and drag her finger along the furniture. As a matter of fact, she has explicitly told me not to go to any trouble preparing for her visit. It's me, this weirdness. Part of my definition of self includes "good housekeeper", which besides being an incredibly dated concept, is a throwback to years of managing under my father's dysfunctional roof.

I don't talk about my dad very often because we're estranged and he hasn't been a part of my daily existence for nearly fifteen years. He's never met either of my kids, which is especially sad, because I believe that he would have delighted in them. I often wonder, especially during the holidays, if he is happy. I wonder if he has surrounded himself with sycophants or with people who are genuinely invested in his well being. I wonder if he has felt the warmth of an embrace by someone who wants nothing from him. I wonder.

But I don't dwell because I'm finally at a place in my life where I can take that book down off the shelf, read a chapter and put it back without getting lost.

Occasionally though, like when I am preparing for company, I become the adolescent that lived in my father's home. Approval was a rare concept but it could be achieved upon the presentation of a clean house.

So I cleaned. Compulsively.

And I still do except that now, I understand that the world will not cease to exist if the kitchen floor has a few crumbs.

Regardless of my hard earned emotional awareness, I'm probably going to find myself on hands and knees today, cleaning baseboards. It's not that my mum would notice or even care but it matters to me.

And nothing screams "well-adjusted" like the scent of Pinesol in the air.