Spring Cleaning By Jamie Kirkpatrick

It’s that time of year: some atavistic impulse kicks in and we all go off on a cleaning tear. Maybe we’re just shaking off the winter doldrums, or maybe it’s all that green pollen that coats everything, our noses and throats included. Or maybe it’s just that we want a clean, fresh start, and what better time to do that than now, when this lovely planet is doing its own version of spring cleaning: trees in bud, bulbs blooming, grass growing—everything is regenerating and rejuvenating after months of dormancy and despair.

At home, I should have seen it coming. A week ago, my wife said she wanted to touch up a “one or two” spots in the kitchen with some fresh paint. Well, give a mouse a cookie and pretty soon, everything was off the walls and a major project was underway. A few days later, same thing, same room, but in our other home over on the Western Shore, except this time, everything had to come off all the counters and out of all the kitchen drawers and cabinets. All the silverware, all the plates and glassware, the coffee pot, the blender, the toaster oven, the fruit bowl…EVERYTHING. Them, of course, EVERYTHING needed a temporary place to reside which means that the dining room began to look like the Beltway during rush hour—all backed up with no place to go. Fortunately, two professional painters came to our rescue, so my wife was promoted to supervisor and the work got done in just two days. However, three more days later, the mouse and I are still in the process of moving things back to where they were, albeit with a little culling of the herd. Decluttering is good for the soul.

Remember that mouse who wanted a cookie? Now, she wants a glass of milk. This time her target is the porch that’s covered with last year’s dead leaves and this year’s whirligigs and pollen. That means everything has to come off so that our handyman friend can now paint the floor of the porch (we’re still over on the Western Shore, mind you) while we hose off all the wicker furniture which we’ve temporarily stacked in the driveway where the cars used to be. At one point,  I couldn’t find something I needed and began to mutter and moan. “What’s the matter?” my wife asked. I said, “Nothing, dear,” never daring for a moment to tell her that what I wanted to do was to stake my claim in the easy chair in front of the television so I could celebrate Easter by watching another golf tournament. Nothing says “Christ is risen!” like watching golf on TV.

Anyway, it’s probably true that once everything gets reassembled and properly stowed away, we’ll feel a modicum of satisfaction because we’ve done our duty and are on track to properly greet the new season. Nope; not so fast. Now that Mother Nature is awake and active again on the Eastern Shore, there’s a backyard full of work to do over there: weeds to pull, edges to cut, mulch to spread, and grass to mow. Fortunately, we know another guy whose back is strong and whose rates are reasonable so, like a baseball manager making his second trip to the mound in the same inning, I’ve signaled to the bullpen for my ace relief pitcher without a pang of regret or remorse. We’ll share the fun!

John Wesley, the father of Methodism, claimed that “cleanliness is next to godliness.” Well right now, I’m feeling especially godly, so on this spring Sunday afternoon, I’m finally going to sit down and watch a few grown men attempt to roll a small white ball into a hole with a flat stick. The mouse and her next spring cleaning project will just have to wait.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.