Old Age Day by Day February 22, 2011

Some cleaning and organization has now transpired, and I no longer imagine the CDC tenting the house and putting us in quarantine. I began my first marriage living with my husband in an apartment over a garage on a big estate. I was the housekeeper and he the gardener. We were in college and the jobs meant we got the apartment rent free. The house had fourteen huge rooms and seven bathrooms. The kitchen area had a kitchen, walk in pantry and breakfast room, and the lady of the house thought the floors looked better if they were scrubbed by hand instead of with the polisher etc she owned. She often would have me also watch her three kids as I went about my merry work. Her daughter's room was the size of my whole house now. She was busy with the Junior League and had adopted the children (all blond and blue eyed) in perfect order: boy, girl, boy. There was a nanny, but I think she was often between nannies. Probably they were college students as well, but I never got to speak to any of them. I was once on my hands and knees in the kitchen when she brought her visiting father through, and they stepped right over me as if I was a box in the way.

So, that kind of killed it for my domestic cleaning career. When my parents would visit us in our tiny apartment, they would be surreptiously wiping down the counters and defrosting the refrigerator. I wanted to explain I had no energy when I was finished with work and classes and writing papers. But it seemed easier to pretend to ignore it and seethe. I never was a big one for conflict, and my parents had more firepower and expertise in that arena. Anyway, whatever houseproud means, I didn't get any of it. Or it got lost early on.

I am of the generation where the girls in the family (of which I was the only one) helped vacuum, do dishes, dust, iron and hang out clothes on the line. My brother did none of it. My mom got cancer when I was fourteen and my brother eleven, and it was understood I would take care of the house and my brother while she was in the hospital and for a long time after. I hated ironing the most. I never iron anything now, I just wear it wrinkled. Thank goodness for perma pressed.

So if I fall behind in the domestic skills, and fight tooth and nail for my husband to do 50%, there is a history.