I’ll take wisdom from any place I can get it. I’ll use Buddhist proverbs, without ever sitting to chant. In this instance, I’m thinking of the adage that asserts when a student is ready, a teacher will arrive. My daily commute takes me past a carpet cleaning store that offers up pithy phrases and words of wisdom, in block letters on a white backlit sign. Not unlike the signs outside high schools that announce the upcoming football game or PTA conferences. Each day, I read with interest what the company thinks its community should know; this humble student is willing to learn, even from a business marquee.
The company has been cleaning carpets and removing spots and stains from rugs and furniture since 1935. I love the symbolism that life lessons emerge from a business whose sole function is to clean up messes. They’ve been cleaning up messes for 75 years, which lends them some authority in my book, as I imagine their cleaning crews have seen every variety of life’s follies – at least the ones that end up leaving some kind of residue on wall-to-wall carpets, Oriental rugs, and leather or upholstered furniture. I’m sure they’ve handled the plain old fashioned wear-and-tear, the messes and decay that come simply because life wears down the fabric of all things – carpets, furniture, cars, clothes, skin, hair, tempers, relationships.
I can only imagine what kinds of other messes they’ve cleaned up. Spilled wine; emissions from sick children, cats, dogs, hamsters and every other kind of household pet; the detritus of every meal, every sloughed off flake of skin; soured smells from stains unseen; pen punctures in the leather recliner; magic marker on the naugahyde; pillows ripped in two; careless burns on the carpet; pounds and pounds of animal hair and dust bunnies and paper clips and coins and receipts stuck between the cushions. Broken promises, broken hearts – surely these leave as much physical evidence as the broken glass and knife-torn fabric heralding the demise of all that once lived in a room.
I could have hired this company the night, over five years ago, when our then-new dining room table and chairs were delivered. This was a brand new, beautiful set; we had worked hard to find one to our mutual liking, and had delighted to find something that we would enjoy for the umpteen million meals to come. We’d had the chair cushions Scotchgarded because we knew that in a household where we wanted not just our own child but all his friends to feel comfortable, we needed the relaxation to know that spills wouldn’t really matter. Because let’s face it: it’s an undisputed mathematical fact that “children = spills.”
The day the tables and chairs were to arrive, we invited another couple and their kids to join us for an initiation meal; I was cooking and preparing for hours that day before the set was delivered, sometime around 5. Our guests came at 6. We chomped and ate and joked and cajoled small children to eat vegetables and toasted the feeling of contentment of sitting around the new table, happy friends, happy tummies. At the end of the meal, one chair was stained, permanently, in defiance of Scotchgard and every known chemical cleaner I later tried. And it’s not because we had the audacity to plop three young children around a brand new table and chairs; it was my husband who spilled. To this day, his chair boasts the irrepressible stain from our inaugural roasted lamb riblets. Of course, all the other chairs now have stains too, and no amount of cleaning efforts on my part has resulted in clean cushions. Maybe I should do more than drive by the cleaner and read the marquee – maybe I should call them.
Each week, the cleaning business offers a new, inarguable statement about the truth of human relationships, strivings and emotions. This week, they offer the following:
“Success cannot be measured by how high you climb, but by how well you bounce.”
Ah, yes. No matter what we attain, we are likely to lose it, so we had damn well know how to bounce back from failure. From fatigue. From the weariness that comes with the energy it took to succeed just minutes ago.
I’m pretty sure my husband still feels guilty about being the first person to damage the chairs. But that stain, not unlike the first scratch on a new car, eliminated the pressure to keep things perfect. I figured the chairs would last long enough to get us through the years when kids are more likely to make the kind of messes that make parents consider buying old, ugly, second-hand furniture. We took our chances, buying a lovely set and telling ourselves we’d just get the seats recovered when our son went off to college. We’ve still got 8 years to go toward that end, and it’s looking like our calculations were a little overenthusiastic. The way all calculations about home and hearth ought to be.
We tend to be bouncers in our home. We aim high, fall some times, and bounce back. We’ve enjoyed countless family meals around this table, holiday treats, and mere cups of soup when one of us is sick. We talk around the table, do homework on the table, pile up all kinds of useless mail and bills and to-do lists on the table that then get hauled off to the recycling bin once every couple of weeks.
Despite the fact that my husband has a 10-hour work day on Fridays, he walks through the door with a touch of freshness and beauty to grace our table, sometimes the elegance of just two or three stems, sometimes a whole bouquet. We place the flowers in a vase, place the vase in the center of the table (which I’m beginning to think has developed the slightest bow, exactly at the spot which has held up the weekly flower vase for 5 years), sit down on our stained chairs, and begin an unhurried Friday evening meal. After the dishes are cleaned, you can bet there’ll be a stack of something put back on the table.
And so it goes. Cleaning and messing up our little world, day after day. Bouncing back, time after time.