I Love Dusting

After becoming PMR I took on more household chores.. and the one I enjoy the most is dusting and surface cleaning.

Note to other men who come to this late in life: when you dust or clean a surface, you often have to move things. YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO PUT EVERYTHING BACK WHERE IT WAS. Women know where everything belongs and, more importantly, know exactly where everything was on the bookcase or table you just cleaned. You don't know these things, and that's fine if you are the only person living at this address, but it is likely not to be fine at all if your wife or some other woman also lives there.

My advice: take pictures. I'm pretty sure that this is why digital cameras were invented - some man needed to move some knick-knacks and realized the dangerous ground he was about to tread. Take pictures, and be sure to take the pictures from several angles so you can better judge the relationship of objects to each other. Then carefully remove the objects to another flat surface, arranging them in the same relative positions they had before you touched them. After cleaning or dusting, you can easily get them back to their approximate positions quickly and then refer to the photos for fine adjustments.

You will still usually get something wrong, but at least you'll be close, so the censure should be mild. WARNING: if by chance your woman insists that something is grossly misplaced, and you know that your pictures will show that she is wrong, resist the temptation to prove it. Let it go. Don't even let her know you took pictures: it's not worth it.

But let's get back to why I love dusting. It's the memories.

The top shelf of my office bookshelf is cluttered with things that have to be moved every weekend when I clean. Every one of them is a memory.

There's a cast iron dog that was my dad's, given to me when I was so young that I can't remember when it wasn't somewhere nearby in my bedrooms as I grew up. There were probably many years where I didn't really notice this little fellow, but now when I pick him up to dust, he always triggers memories of childhood.. sometimes I just hold him an extra few seconds to soak in those long ago years. There is the group of Simpson's cartoon character statues my wife gave me just this year; five little figurines to move, each needing to be handled separately.. and I think of my wife, and other gifts we have shared in our long decades together.

On the bookshelf behind me is a Conch shell my mother had in her living room for years, a favorite picture of me as a two year old with my two older sisters.. I love looking at that picture; it seems that every time I see it some different memory rises up from my past. And then beside that is a lovely little figurine of a young girl with her dad - our youngest gave me that this year and it has become something I sometimes just stare at, letting memories flow as I pause for a minute or so.

But most of all it's the pictures. The small frames on bookshelves and dressers, the larger ones hung on the walls. Here is our older daughter as a baby, there she is as a teenager, here is her wedding day. A silly picture of my sister in a floppy hat that I love - I can't help smiling as I dust it. Many pictures, many memories.

And then in a corner near my bed is my dad in his sailboat, wind in his face, doing what he probably loved the most in all the world. He's been gone many years now and I probably wouldn't think of him as often as I do if it were not for that picture. It brings back memories of so many things, him, his boat, sailing, swimming.. I could spend a long time with just that picture alone.

Our home is full of memories, but so often these things just become part of the background blur and aren't really noticed. When I dust and clean, I do notice, and I remember.

That's why I love to dust.

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