Mrs. Clean

I’m a Childless Mother.  That’s right, Charlie is gone. When we kicked him, er, I mean shipped him off to college a few weeks ago, I cried me a river.  Here’s a tip from D.Parker: when your high-school graduate crashes his car, chips his (beautiful, $4000-orthodonture-straightened) tooth on a beer bottle, and loses your credit card all within a week, it’s time to write that tuition check and hand him over to the College Dean.

But the truth is, I felt lost.  I missed that little bastard like crazy, and the realization that all my chicks have left the nest kept me in hankies for well over a week.  Cried me a river?  Nope, I cried me an ocean.  Only the knowledge that his car is parked in the garage, and that I’m not privy to whatever hijinks he’s up to at any given hour of any given day, helps me sleep at night.  That and knowing that my apartment is very clean.  I mean really, really clean.  Which brings us back to my first full day as a Childless Mother.

Since I had nobody to make a four-egg-and-cheese-omelet-with-a-side-of-breakfast-potatoes-and-toast for, no trail-of-dirty-socks-and-boxers to pick up, nobody to make three-giant-sandwiches-to-take-to-work-cause-he-gets-starving-before-lunch for, and nobody to drive-to-work-because-he-forgot-he-left-his-car-at-his-friend’s-house-last-night (?), I decided that cleaning the apartment would be both productive and therapeutic.  When we downsized to a small apartment, I did some math to determine how many more pairs of shoes I could buy with the money I used to pay my cleaning lady.  The answer was… MANY MORE. And with that I said “Adios, Guadalupe!”   I’m not gonna lie, it was a relief…my constant suspicion over whether or not she really liked my dog, and weekly worry that she would put the bedsheets on backwards, was exhausting.

You may be thinking, “D.Parker, you are way too much of a princess to clean your own house!” and to that I say, you are half right!  Yes, of course, I am a Princess, even Siri calls me “Your Highness,” but I do know how to clean a house, and I do a damn good job.  Case in point, that day after Charles left, I cleaned my apartment for eight hours.  That is not a typo.  Had you been here and licked any part of anything, you simply would have happily announced, “Delicious!”  Perhaps my state of mind had a little something to do with my overzealousness that day…it probably wasn’t necessary to use up all those toothbrushes…because the following week it only took me six hours.  Which got me thinking about Guadalupe, and my old big house, and the fact that she was in and out of there in five hours each week!  Truth be told, I didn’t usually stick around to watch her in action, but unless she was a Time Traveler, there’s no way she was cleaning the way I do.  And about that I have a deep, deep sense of disgust and regret.

Nonetheless, in the same way that I’ve weaned myself from my children, my daily sobs reduced to mere snivels, I’m trying to wean myself from obsessive compulsive cleaning.  Maverick is being very helpful in this regard by lovingly referring to my habits as “annoying,” and “Nazi-like;” suggesting other ways to fill my days like “taking a long walk off a short pier,” and spending some time with “a therapist;” and trying to break my spirit with oldies-but-goodies like leaving his shoes where I’ll  trip on them, spilling red wine and making crumbs.  Like last night when we were “discussing” his refusal to lean over the sink when he eats a crumbly cookie, and his flat-out rejection of my Bite and Suck method, he kept insisting that it was for my own good, and that if I could learn to embrace crumbs and dust I would be a happier person.  Clearly he would be a happier person, I would just feel dirty.

But as I carried on in a harangue over the splatters he left on the stove and tried to hide under the teakettle (I mean, come on!  Did he really think I wouldn’t notice the kettle off of it’s usual spot?) I thought about how I would rather be cuddled up in bed watching Real Housewives with a glass of pinot noir.  As I maniacally scrubbed with the intensity of ten Guadalupes, I considered how it would feel to sleep later in the morning, should that one glass of pinot turn into two or five, if I wasn’t hell-bent on making the bed, washing the coffee pot, swiffering the floors and folding a load of laundry before I allowed myself to leave the house. Could it be?  Could Mav be right?

Well, if you know me, you know that Maverick is never right. Let’s just say a Childless Mother is forever doomed to clean up after her absent children and a loving husband tries to fill that void.  If mine will agree to stop sautéing things, then I will try to limit what he terms my “reign of terror” to five hours a week, in a vain attempt to make up for all those corners and underneaths that Guadalupe must have been skipping.  And now I must take my leave, as there is a fingerprint on this computer screen that requires my immediate attention.