Spring Cleaning

 by Shinazy

     I’m a city girl surrounded by distractions.  When I want to go out to eat, I just step out the door and within a half a mile - I can eat the food of any nation on the planet.  If I want to see a movie, I just check Fandango and within a 10-minute drive, I can watch any film.  There are plays, musicals, comedies, and lectures.  I’m always entertained.

     This weekend I’m in the country, or I should say COUNTRY.  There’s no movie house.  Tonight, a Friday night - date night – the area’s one non-American cuisine restaurant has six customers (including my aunt and me) and the only gas station stopped accepting credit cards last year. 

     The background dim of the big city is absent, no traffic noise, no airplane flyovers.  The other main distractions are also missing … no internet access and my smartphone decides to go unplugged as well.

     It’s raining.  The only sound reaching my ears are the drops hitting the gutter with such force that I first thought I was hearing gunshots.  If the weather were dryer and warmer, I’d be out on the lake or hiking in the hills.  But it’s hailing and frosty causing me to feel a bit wimpy, so I stay inside and visit with my aunt.  

     Aunt Judy owns a museum size art-glass collection.  These colorful, transparent objects sit on glass shelves in deep glass windows - big open spaces with no definition between inside and outside.  There are so many pieces the windows appear as though they were made of stained glass.  Today the art has a grayish haze about them – is it the reflection of the rainy sky? 
    
 The house has gone through winter, sealed tight to protect her from the damp chill.  The pellet stoves roar all day and night exhaling warm breath.  It’s a house ready for spring cleaning and I have nothing else to do.
    
  I’m afraid to touch these pieces – fragile and unforgiving, one wrong move in the sink and I’ll have a pile of worthless glass confetti.  One by one, each piece gets a bath and emerges … sparklingly beautiful.  With Windex in one hand and newspaper in the other, I attack the shelves, the windows – inside and out.  The cleaning has my full attention, no distractions. 

     The sun just broke through the clouds and houses across the lake are glowing silver.  There’s no longer smog hovering on the surface of one piece of glass.  I found this activity enjoyable because, unlike my work, at the end of the day, when I’m finished doing all I can do, I can see the results of my effort – spotless, transparent, pristine, gleaming glass. 

     I think I’ll go home and spring clean . . .  Everything.

photo by fdecomite & ellenm1