Tinky the House Elf may not have come, but someone else is coming.
My mother.
Tonight.
(♩♪♫♬ dun dun DAH! ♩♪♫♬)
Her advent, even more so than that of the cleaners on Tuesday, has spurred a massive tidying spree, especially since in our shoebox of a house Mum is going to have to bunk in with Gothic Pre.
Now usually I dispatch Gothic Pre to her bedroom to go mucking it out alone, along with severe warnings of:
1) the sky-high fee I’ll charge for the job, should she fail in her mission; and
2) a complete screen ban if it isn’t done to my neurotic satisfaction.
On this occasion, however, it was glaringly apparent that we would have to address her two floor-to-ceiling cupboards. Mum needs somewhere to unpack, and for the past few years Gothic’s been stuffing those cupboards willy nilly to the gills so that they, like the vomiting laundry basket, have reached Monsieur Creosote proportions.
So daunting and horrific was the prospect that for the greater part of the afternoon I avoided it, taking to my bed to nurse a monster hangover from the night before. (Another story entirely, but I assure you I was feeling more than a tad ordinary and, two days later, am still not recovered. Every muscle in my body has sullenly stiffened in protest at the rock-your-ass-off dancing I indulged in while lavishly fuelled by several vats of wine.)
Digression aside, I was pleasantly lulled into complacency by a surprisingly quick run through of the clothes cupboard, during which Gothic even set some items aside for the Salvos (delighted disbelief accompanied by angel song!) I left it until after supper to look into the other cupboard, fondly deceiving myself: she’s outgrown most of her toys in favour of the bassoon, Facebook and the romantic dashing hero of the hour: Heathcliff. So how long could it take? Twenty minutes at the most.
Ha!
I sat Gothic on the floor with instructions to Sort, Chuck and Order and then opened the cupboard. It emitted a long belly laugh of ominous foreboding. My hangover started throbbing again. I discovered Gothic has not thrown out anything in more than three years: not one item of schoolwork, not one piece of rubbish, nothing. She’s a throwback to her father’s side of the family of collectors and hoarders. As a chronic mover – twice trans-continentally – I’m the type to resolutely and hard-heartedly jettison any and everything in the knowledge that very soon I will be assembling moving boxes yet again. Clutter brings me out in hives.
Ploughing through the Himalayas of junk, I realised that every time I had delivered a room-cleaning edict, all Gothic did was scoop up everything that inhabited her floor space and dump it into the cupboard. In addition to this she had amassed a collection of environmental friendly shopping bags, each of which contained the ‘essential’ items she’d packed for about ten trips away, a couple of Guide camps, and several school functions. None of these had she unpacked, she’d simply slung each bag into the bottomless cupboard, dusted her hands and issued me with a beatific smile of accomplishment. Also my rummaging unearthed countless items of mine she’d sworn innocence of: my tweezers for example, which had me out and about with a shaggy monobrow for weeks until I replaced them. With anorexic self control I closed my lips tightly and said nothing.
Gothic and I are a mismatch. Her supersensitive gentleness quails in the face of my explode and shoot-from-the-hip personality. If I lose it to start stamping and yelling, she goes to pieces and becomes tearfully and completely unable to function. (Her siblings are the opposite. My son just lets a diatribe slide off his waterproof duck back and advises me to calm down, and QueenBee doesn’t give a stuff.) However, Gothic is good for me. From her I’ve learned the art of quiet diplomacy and sometimes manage to curb my fiery temper and STFU.
This was one of those occasions. It was late and we needed the job done, so I shut up and shoveled, and Gothic sorted through the snowballing detritus. At one point, I had to relieve her groaning waste paper basket and wheel in the 240l recycling bin. We filled it. Two and a half hours later the floor was clear.
Ever gracious, Gothic said, ‘You are amazing, Mum. I’m not proud of that cupboard. Thanks for helping me.’
There again she humbles me. I wish I were a lot more like her and a lot less like me.
However, my neurosis is smoothed, the tidying is done and I can’t wait to see Mum. And as for you, Tinky, you’ve left it too late. I don’t need your tardy self any more. I’m handing your cupboard over to one of the cats.