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TagsBY LORI SENDER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
The house is a wreck, each room a perfect tableau of disorganization. The kitchen could use a major sweep, maybe even two passes of a mop, laundry baskets brim with folded laundry, so can't quite do new laundry.
Each tabletop is littered with papers, books, plastic bags with receipts yet to be determined. The luggage from last week's rained-out Vermont ski trip stands resolutely at the top of the stairs, awaiting my husband's fallen scream in the middle of the night.
Still, the house isn't dirty (credit goes to cleaning lady). So really, no big deal, she'll be here soon enough to tidy up my life. And meanwhile who will see it?
Many, it turns out, possibly hundreds if not thousands (well, if it's a good one) ... on YouTube. My 10-year-old son has uploaded a video with a nicely angled, unfolded sofa, replete with misplaced pillows and sloppy sheets, half-filled cups of soda on, yes, I see, a sticky looking side table.A well-framed backdrop of Legos covers every square inch of window sill. With his new Flip camera, my aspiring auteur and his devoted production assistant, have unleashed my disheveled world out onto the worldwide Web.
The indie-short acts as prime cleanup motivator. I make a solemn pledge that for the next five hours, two, for sure ... definitely today, I will refrain from writing, playing piano, speaking to a friend. I will not watch that Netflix video that resurfaced on this perfectly rainy day, after three rental-fee months spent glancing over at untold piles.
It was not always like this. There was a time when beds were made and chairs properly aligned under a table. I grew up with two obsessively tidy parents, neurotic and neat as the cleaning day was long. Theirs was a united front of domestic order, a well choreographed two-step of dusting and Windexing, as Fred and Ginger would kiss then dip, bearing Ajaxed sponge and whisk broom.
Not surprising, they never instilled this passion to their three children, not with all the screaming necessary to enforce this feng shui environment. Their Pinesoled paradise came at the cost of sullen teenagers and whispered anarchy, as my sister and I took our suppressed hostility behind the closed door of our bedroom.
Each morning before school, my father would awaken me by throwing on the lights, tossing off my blanket and blasting the vacuum cleaner, any coincidental Hoover attachment shove of the bed considered added impetus. As I'd brush my teeth, he'd be sweeping at my feet, Ajaxing around my hands, forever bending down to pluck some tissue microbe off the tile floor. A piece of lint would elicit a deep groan, a reprobate bobby pin an exhaustive "For Christ's sake!"
One day my sister and I plotted an actual fire in the den fireplace. With our parents gone, we conspired to enjoy a Million Dollar Movie and some WisPride cheese, figuring with an open sliding glass door and some aerosol spray, we'd rid any lingering suspects.
Only my parents came home early. I can still remember the buckets of soapy water, my sister and I solemnly scrubbing brick on our knees, as our mother delegated from behind.
My son and his assistant are now across the street working out the final mise-en-scène of their short. I call over to see about dinner and his mom bemoans her own cleaning shortfalls soon to be splashed across YouTube. Later that night, my son and I watch their "American Idol" parody, notable in the toys spilling out from her basement closet and baskets of laundry reaching dizzying heights atop a ping pong table.
