I’d been letting trash build up in paper bags around the trash can, hoping someone else would get annoyed enough to handle the situation. This is silly.
I cleaned the house last night. I sprayed orange cleaner on everything in the kitchen, waited for the fumes to settle and went to town. I let every speck of dirt I found fall to the floor. I watched the tiles at me feet be covered with onion peels, a rotten potato, tortilla chip crumbs, coffee grounds.
I swept the mess into the trashcan and ran mop water that was so hot it covered my hand in steam by the time I walked from shower to kitchen. I watched the tiles reappear, return to their shining grey. I watched the kitchen transform, return to the way it was when Rachel and I first fell in love with our little house.
I was contented. Joe was out for the night, so with no one to lay around on the phone with, I kept myself moving. I scrubbed the bathroom. I decided that if you left it out, it was my right to throw it away. I piled up things from my life that I want to give to Goodwill, things that I may be able to sell, and things that I didn’t even remember having.
I felt lighter, airier. I got close to that summery feeling from the times of V8 juice and new house smell. I felt like so much of what had been bothering my vanished when I scrubbed the orange cleaner off of the stove, was washed up and thrown out with the mop water. I felt respectable and respected: I’d prepared a clean place for me to think and be in. Sometimes, I forget to think and just keep doing. Sometimes, worse times, I forget to be.
I wanted to continue that this morning. I set my alarm for six, actually forced myself out of bed at 6:30 and got dressed right away. It’s the weekend, so that means leggings and the biggest sweater I could find, which does not prevent me from going back to bed.
I crept down the stairs and remembered the teapot my grandma gave Joe and me for Christmas. I still had the blooming tea bulb it came with, and I thought it was a perfect morning for it: the cool air outside still, my mind quiet and able to “feel the effects,” as my yoga video would say, of the jasmine and herbs.
Months ago, when we returned to the house after Christmas break, Joe and I tossed the instructions. I’d been teaching myself how to do and make more things around the house, and I was confident in my tea-brewing abilities. We’d become frequent shoppers at a tea store in St. Louis, and they’d given us tips for each kind of tea. For jasmine, a floral tea, the water shouldn’t boil; the leaves shouldn’t steep too long.
I don’t have a kitchen thermometer, so I did my best to guess when the water was hot enough. I poured it over the dried bulb of tea (looked a bit like an owl pellet, actually). Nothing. I thought that perhaps I was supposed to completely drown the little guy, so I poured the whole kettle’s contents into the teapot. Nothing.
It is my habit to become angry, then discouraged, then depressed when my domestic skills fail me. This progression takes less than five minutes. I felt the tightening in my throat and refused to accept it. Not today. It is Lent. I have said no excuses. I am trying again; I am not accepting that I cannot do this. I am not going to fail.
I emptied the teapot, put more water in the kettle and forced myself to be more patient. (If you know me, feel free to laugh at that last bit.) I watched for the steam, knew that it would come out of the kettle’s spout seconds before it started screaming and boiling.
The moment this steaming, near boiling water hit the bulb there was an explosion of color. Red petals floated on a green water lily. The scent of jasmine was so sweet it made my eyes water. The color turned beige then caramel.
My throat loosened. I grabbed a Late July dark chocolate sandwich cookie, my white teacup and my computer. I am ready for another day and reminded that sometimes we have to wait for that moment just before boiling to open ourselves up.
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