We stepped out of our taxi after travelling for two days and saw our zoo keeper son, in our garage, bent double inside his car with the vacuum. He unfolded himself and stood up to wave and then ducked back down again while we hauled 6 large and 6 small bags in the vague direction of the back door.
We made a mountain of the luggage by the step and paid the driver; our son came towards us, unfurled, beaming, arms outstretched, torso glistening, nay, dripping, with sweat. I did an air hug and smiled,
“You guys are 30 minutes earlier than I expected,” he said.
When we entered the house I suspected our timing was a whole lot more than 30 minutes off.
“For the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2) I brushed aside the scripture verse, I was jet lagged and irritable. I sought His hand and took a deep breath.
The sink was full of dishes and my son was detailing his car…obviously we left him the wrong piece of property to steward.
A sink full of dishes would have been all right and I may have been able to keep my hands from plunging into the water to scour and rinse them had it not been for the rest of the house, or at least the part that was instantly visible on my entry into the kitchen through the back door.
To the left of me, in my glassed in garden room, I saw a washer and dryer, three tables balanced atop one another, a file cabinet, a chain saw, several creek mud balls, wood shavings, most of the tools from the tool cupboard, six or eight pairs of stinky tennies, towels, swimsuits, chlorine packets of Shock, air guns, pellets, a half a dozen throwing and gutting knives, a skate board-come-crude potter’s wheel, an empty pool pump box, a tent, climbing rope and two empty gas cylinders, all piled on top of the furniture already in my garden room which now had about as much appeal as a landfill, there was even an oil pan lurking beneath the glass topped table. I breathed a sigh as I surveyed my once beautiful haven, which, according to the current steward of our home, was at once,
“Too dang hot in the summer and bloody freezing in the winter, to do anything else with…”
Anything else than what? Turn it into a municipal dump?
In front of me, the kitchen, all surfaces laden with dishes (for easy access), mail (which no-one opened)…really? Who gets mail these days? Even opting for paperless, which I thought I had done, the amount of mail accumulated over a year was impressive and covered several surfaces to commanding heights.
In the middle distance, the dining and living room, whose furniture, littered with the flotsam and jetsam of daily living, had been moved to unaccountable places. I fleetingly recalled their juvenile attempts at re-arranging their rooms (remember I’m a furniture mover), beds dead centre were all the rage and lasted…ooooh, ten minutes until I moved them over to hug a wall.
Later I asked our eldest,
“What made you move the furniture around like this?’ I was striving to make some sense out of the nonsensical.
“Simon was deep cleaning one day and decided to try some stuff out, as we’ve always done from time to time.”
I was yet to learn of the avalanche of tiles that had cascaded from the fireplace surround which was now cunningly obscured by the unsightly positioning of the sofa…yes!!…right across the fireplace!
In the distance, one of the decks, with two massive barbecue grills and a smoker butted against one of the lounge windows, blackened, rugged, eyesores that obscured what I was to find when I ventured outside, but that was to come later.
I made a sign of the cross and thanked God my zoo keeper son hadn’t been granted his falconry license!
As my barrista daughter said, who was returning from a year to end all years into the waiting arms of her beloved,
“Let’s be honest Mum, they would never have been able to clean the house to your standards…”
“Ah,” I thought, “I trained them well enough to be able to replace everything to where it belonged.”
It may have taken some time, but obviously, going by our youngest son’s misjudgment of our ETA, time started running out 13 months ago.
And I hadn’t reckoned on the attitude…that was yet to come!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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