To clean our room. Actually, I did that earlier. Faced with an empty class slot, I decided to take an hour or so and clean from stem to stern the dump that was my room.
I did. It was great.
Of course, I was mildly interested to see, when I got all through, that I really was reminding myself of my mom. I was dusting blinds and cleaning underneath the you-can't-see-under-here-anyway-so-why-bother part of the sink, and I vacuumed, and all sorts of things which one normally doesn't think of doing in a dorm room. Heck, we were doing good to be able to see the floor most of the week. However, this morning the fit took me and I cleaned up, mom-style. Then, roommate #1 came back. She brushed her hair, washed her hands, and left again to go to Mass. I look around what had been a clean and organized room.
There was a hairbrush sitting on top of a dresser, a drawer sitting open, and a washcloth on the sink instead of on it's hangar.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.
I feel my mom's pain, all of a sudden, in a new and frightening way. I now understand why she used to fall off her rocker at us if we failed to replace the towel on the rack, or if we left our clothes all over the floor of the closet instead of hanging them up. (Or if we left our shoes sitting in the middle of the floor at the bottom of the steps and people nearly died terrible suicidal deaths by tripping over them. Hehehe. Those were not good days...) I now understand. She had taken care and time and everything to see that the house was in order, and there was peace in her heart because all was as it should be, her children could exist in a clean and well-ordered environment, and she didn't have to worry about things growing in our laundry hampers. All was well. Then, we came in and walked all over that order by failing to return the house to it's immaculate state of cleanliness, preferring for all intents and purposes to leave things where they should not be. All this despite the fact that it's painfully simple to just hang up said towel, put away said clothes, or properly cubbyhole said shoes.
I understand.
I'm also the world's biggest hypocrite, because I still leave all of the aboves in the wrong places and my mom still falls off her rocker. Yet I complain about the habits of my dear sweet roommates. The difference at this current moment is that I'm having a cleaning fit so I feel empathy with the Mother. (The mothership is calling me to vacuumm...ooohhhmmmm...)
Ha. This makes me think, of course, of the other difference between my mother and I. She would have never let the room get into such a deplorable state, or at least would have cleaned it up long ago. I didn't. Mom can't work with a mess around, neither can I. Mom would take time to clean up the mess, I just go away where I can't see it.
And the girls are leaving dishes everywhere again.
However, that also reminds me. There is a dish of tea and a copy of Beowulf waiting for me back at the dorm, so I should go. This is, I think, my first almost-midnight post, which makes me feel oddly legitimate as far as blogging goes. With that said, I'm off to read a little classical literature, and disperse my history notes to the four winds.
No, actually, to the three classmates. Thanks for joining us, ladies and gentlemen. Goodnight, Betty, wherever you are!
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