WESTMINSTER — I always thought the reason my daughter Asia felt uncomfortable in my house was because it was so full of unorganized stuff, because it was so messy. So when I found out she was coming to visit this summer, I had a plan.
Instead of trying to get my whole house in order and failing (as in previous years), I would concentrate my entire effort on one room, making that room a place where we (she, her husband Mike, and I) could sit and visit comfortably. I decided on the living room with a hardy effort at the bathroom thrown in for good measure.
When I told her my plan, she said, “There's no way you'll ever get all the dust!”
Dust? I thought. Really, dust had been off my radar entirely. It was dust that concerned her? I'd never had an inkling. How could I have gotten through all those visits of her avoidance of and discomfort in my house without finding out about the dust?
“Dust?” I asked, finally remembering how she doesn't like to sit in a room that has bright sunshine coming through the window showing those tiny dust motes in the air. “It's dust that bothers you?”
“Mom! You know how I can't even put maple syrup on my pancakes if there's dust showing in the air!”
And as she said it, that did sort of come back to me, although only in a third-party kind of way. Her father's house is where the pancakes get served.
“Well, then, you must love your new condo - never lived in before, all fresh and tight and sealed. No dust in there,” I said, remaining steadfastly upbeat.
“As a matter of fact, I dust three times a day,” she said. “Don't you remember me telling you about my wonderful new feather duster?”
I didn't remember - a feather duster is hardly something I'd be likely to use up memory cells on. But instead of saying so, I asked, “Doesn't a feather duster just move the dust from one place to another?”
“It moves it down,” she said. “Then, when it's all on the floor, I mop it up. That's why the hardwood floors are so great. No rugs for us!”
I realized then I was in trouble.
* * *
When you have a lot of stuff, there are many surfaces for dust to gather. It isn't just an easy swipe with a dustcloth, not even if you've just gone out and bought an economy-size spray bottle of Pledge Multi Surface.
Still, I stuck to my guns. I gave up reading and spent my time cleaning - not just dusting, but washing, vacuuming, mopping, even cleaning crevices with a toothbrush. Just that one room, but doing all I could and then sitting on the couch and looking around with a dust-magnet eye. Over and over.
And then, when they arrived, she did sit in the room. She said it was nice. We sat around and chatted. I thought everything was fine.
But it turned out not to be just dust. It turned out to be not even just dirt, although that was the next step.
I had lent my winter car to her and Mike to use while they were here. After their first day of using it, she came into the house and asked me for all my cleaning supplies: Windex, Ajax, paper towels, Pledge, Febreze, Mean Green Super Strength Cleaner/Degreaser, trash bags.
“We're picking up Holly at the airport tomorrow,” she said. “How can we expect her to get into that car?”
She cleaned the car for an hour or more, interspersed with questions.
“Why do you have two road atlases?”
“Why do you leave food in your car?”
“Do you know there are half-eaten candy bars on the backseat floor? Does that mean there have been mice in there?”
“Why do you have so many containers of oil?”
“Were you wondering what ever happened to those gift certificates to Harlow's you had?”
And finally, when she'd done all she could:
“Where's the nearest place with a car vacuum?”
* * *
I was standing in the driveway watching as she backed out when suddenly the car jerked to a stop and she leaped out screaming.
“Something touched my toe!” she squealed, glaring down at her fancily sandaled foot. “It was a mouse - I swear it was a mouse!”
Mike and I got down on our knees and peered all around, banging and brushing to no avail.
“Maybe it was a moth,” I finally said. “Whatever it was, there's nothing now.”
She got back into the car gingerly, saying, “I hate the country!”
When she got back from town, she said, “Bellows Falls is so dirty! It's like the slums!”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“People's porches are full of junk - they're cluttered with old couches and chairs. And stuff all over their lawns. They have junk filling up their driveways. Their houses have paint peeling off. And people are sitting on their front steps smoking cigarettes and drinking beer in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Doesn't anyone have jobs?”
She had gotten the car vacuumed and acceptably clean, but the weather was so rainy and chilly she was starting to have second thoughts about sleeping in the little cabin in the woods that she'd always loved so. Her father had cleaned it all out for her, and it seemed to pass muster, but she didn't want to be wet and cold. She started calling motels and asking prices.
“I know you don't like my house,” I said, “but maybe you could sleep at your Dad's.”
“His house is old, too,” she said. “You can't get old houses clean no matter how hard you try.”
“Well, what about Margie's house? How did that go last night?” I asked, knowing that Margie's house, although old, is very clean. It's a dorm house at Putney School.
“There were dog hairs!” she said. “And there will be more dog hairs at Clover's when I go for dinner tonight. I hope I can get myself past them.”
“Clover's dog has the shortest hair of any dog I've ever known,” I said.
“But they're there,” she said. “They're always there when there's a dog.”
I was so glad to hear it. All this time I thought it was my house, my dust, my accumulation of stuff that drove her crazy.
Now I'd discovered that it's just nature itself that she wants to avoid. Thank goodness she's got that city condo to go back to - she'd probably like it even better if it were hermetically sealed.