It was queer during my first week at home. Not the Executive Director anymore, but the Mistress of the House.
With a fascination to cleaning worthy of Monica Geller and with my obsessive personality coming to center stage, I started on my first and all-inclusive home project - put everything in order.
I started with my working desk. I wanted to sort the bond papers, but i saw a stray photograph, so I searched for the photo albums. Some were in the cabinets in the kitchen, some in the cabinets in the family room. A Japanese coin rolled from one of the album boxes, so I looked for the coin albums. The last time I saw the coin albums, they were with Nika. So I rummaged among Nika's books in her bedroom cabinet.
Ugh the trail! I wanted to line up my collection of Reader's Digest, so I have to use one of the two 1970's decorative chests my mother-in-law gave to me. And since I was working on one of them, I have to check the second chest and made it my official MBA files container. Lesson notes, written analyses of cases, books, clear books.
Speaking of MBA, I needed to line up my books accordingly: business, parenting, fiction, and what-else. Below my books are my paper bags filled with envelopes. An envelope each for Nika's policy, Gela's policy, Mike's policy, my first policy, my second policy, my third policy, oh!
Below the envelopes were my black bags (collected from an assortment of congresses and conventions I attended or organized) that contain more of my folders and envelopes. And whoa, below the envelopes is dust. So I bring in my house help to give the bedroom a general cleaning and a new arrangement. See, cleaning for me means re-arrangement. Re-arrangement means I have touched everything. Or else it will not be as clean as I wanted it to be.
Moving the side tables to the foot of the bed, I saw in one of the drawers the various cables and wires and chargers for the digital camera, the video camera, the lost Nokia phone, the old Nokia phone, the new Nokia phone, and what contraption and gadget we had, we lost or still use. So I picked a basket to contain all these black spaghettis, but not before I folded them neatly and tied them up with Gela's hair rubber strings.
But the basket came from my kitchen center table which holds the canned, boxed and bottled goods. So I have to move some canned soup to go together with the canned corn kernel. The bottled oyster sauce should be with the bottled italian dressing. The box of biscuits must be by the buffet table so that it will be easily accessed by the girls. And oh inside the buffet table, the serving dishes and the pot holders are in a mess!
It has been two weeks into this cleaning job and I am not yet done. The tool box in the garage are still untouched. And I even haven't begun with the Christmas decors yet. Just where are they? The curtains and bed linens needed to be segregated. The shoes lined up. The collection of movies arranged per category. And the old collection of audio compact discs!
Just when do I stop? I don't know. Looking for my own set of tools, I found it inside the study table of Gela. So the girls were using it. Opening it I screamed like a banshee.
For inside my tool kit were old and wrinkled leaves, crumpled paper with burnt sides, brown smelly cotton and little stones and some thorns. Remnants of the game the girls had when they were agog about Spiderwick Chronicles. They must have used the kit as a container for their "finds" for their own home-made field guide.
But looking at the array, I was scared. Maybe because I think that this child's play was not in its correct place and it was unexpected. Which made me think some more: am I in my right place? Am I not a craggy seed tucked away where a hammer should be? All right, was sitting down in my comfy big chair facing the computer on my table the right place for me rather than this attempt to stay at home?
Groping into a cabinet, I found a heavy black suitcase. I opened it and I saw my Mama Precy's wedding gift to me. A collection of German-made gilded spoons, forks, coffee teaspoons, dessert forks - the complete cutlery and serving tools for a meal. Tucked away for a President's visit, we never used these. I think it's time I should.
And I should put my talents to enriching this family. I should get to know my daughters more intimately before they grow shoot right past me. I should take a career that shall give me time to complement the business of my husband. I should also have time for myself and do the things I have been planning to do - enroll in gym class, write a book, nap after lunch.
And with that, I accepted that I am right, right where I am.
And the cleaning continues..
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