There were lots of strange things that occurred during those seven magical years growing up at 110 Flamingo Street, a few of which I still can’t write about. But of those that I can, this story is perhaps one of the strangest. What makes it so?
Well, this time it isn’t about what any of my three brothers, The Sister, or myself did — although we all did lots of strange things. It’s what Mom did. She did it every spring. And it made absolutely no sense to any of us.
Forget the month on the calendar. Back on Flamingo, when temperatures reached the mid-seventies, Mom declared spring had finally arrived. Let the deep cleaning begin! Before any of us were out of bed, she had already been up for hours sorting through all the prized treasures we’d collected over the past year.
Piled on most flat surfaces around the house were Yo-Yos, sling shots, Super Balls, headless Barbie dolls and other assorted broken toys. Mom cleared it, boxed it, and then set it outside on the back lawn to be given away. She’d just declared our “Prized Treasures” as junk and the junk had succumbed to spring cleaning. Even worse, when we awoke, she made us help!
Mom’s spring-cleaning wasn’t completed in just one day or even a couple of days. No, a thorough cleaning took an entire week. All toys, clothes, tools, pots and pans, and even furniture were moved outside. We hung area rugs on the clothesline and took turns beating them with brooms and sticks. (Mom made it a point to tell us that rugs are beaten, not kids.)
Of course we did have a vacuum cleaner, but it never worked more than a month at a time. That’s how long it took before a shoestring, a little green army man, or one of Barbie’s missing limbs was sucked up, causing the machine to cough, sputter, and stop working.
After everything was finally cleaned, Mom started to categorize, making the decision to keep or give our stuff away. It took two days to empty the entire house, three days to clean and categorize, and then another day to move all the clean stuff back in.
The last day was saved for final arguments about why we “just couldn’t live” without the stuff Mom had labeled “junk.” In the end, most of our stuff was moved back inside. Only difference was it was clean. See? Told you it didn’t make much sense.
Mom’s threat, “You kids don’t want to know what’ll happen if this house doesn’t stay clean,” rang in our ears for weeks following spring cleaning. And that’s about as long as it took for our mom, a mom of five kids, to give up trying to make our house look like one of those perfect houses in a magazine.
Currently in our house live four kids, all under the age of 13. Each one has the ability at any given moment to make a huge mess. And if you ask The Wife, she would add a fifth child to that list.
When I stated last week I thought it was warm enough for me to get started on the spring cleaning, she smiled and said, “Married almost 18 years. Guess it’s never too late to start.”
That’s when the girls started their afternoon running in the house. From our basement living area, they sounded like a small herd of elephants. We both smiled at the sound. Then one of the elephants jumped off of something onto the floor above, causing our light fixtures to shake so much they almost dislodged from the ceiling.
The Wife left for a moment and came back, gave me a kiss along with a broom. She said, “Remember, rugs are beaten, not kids.”
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories since 2001. To read more of Rick’s stories, visit his blog: storiesbyrick.wordpress.com.]
