Confessions of a Closet Cleaner
Confession: If it beckons you, follow.
The late September heat forced me inside of my suburban nest equipped with central air conditioning. I had planned to spend my toddler free afternoon in the arms of a Regency hero while snuggled on my couch.
Treasured novel in one hand. Tea in the other. I was ready.
Come on, relaxation.
But then it happened . . .
Guilt.
The same guilt my great-grandma warned me about in her matter-of-fact tone:
We can’t just sit, Jaclyn. We’re women.
There’s this notion — well, at least in my family — that if you’re a woman and you finally find a few minutes of the day to yourself, something is wrong. What are you not doing that should be done?
I refer to this as the springs-on-your-fanny syndrome.
No way, I had vowed.
Sorry Grandmama, but I’ll never let that happen to me.
And when you vow that something will never happen, it most certainly does. (Someone up above is winking at me. I’m sure of that.)
So on that hot afternoon in September, I found myself with a self that I never knew — a cleaning obsessed, maniacal self.
Perhaps I had her locked away all these years? Maybe she was just hiding?
Either way, I unleashed her.
(And if you’re wondering, I apologized to the Regency gentleman. He would have to wait.)
Confession: Watch out for debris.
I discovered — although not completely unexpected — that this other self, she’s a total control freak, a typical Type A perfectionist. She gets a high inflicting her straight lines and dust free agenda on anyone or anything in her path.
Not even the cat was safe.
I passed an image of this new self in my bathroom mirror. And after a hearty laugh, I wondered:
Who the hell was this suburbanite on a rampage?
This rogue, dust-fighting warrior with combat gear: gloves, disinfectant spray, paper towels, and a dustpan. I hardly recognized her.
My new self’s motto: Everything must go.
From the kitchen pantry to the garage, not a shelf, a drawer, or closet were left unturned. This included myself.
I found my life could be sorted in three piles:
Donate.
Keep.
Toss.
Press repeat.
My afternoon cleaning-self was an insatiable beast that ate its way into an ugly weeklong buffet. And she left room for dessert.
The bedroom closet. The my side and your side closet. The married couple conjoined closet. (Guess whose side was worse?)
As I had tackled most of the house, what trouble could one more closet be . . .
I am not H.G. Wells but I had entered my own time machine.
My side was full of more me than I ever believed could be in one room at the same time. Since moving to the suburbs, I had packed myself with two decades of my various selves from ceiling to floor.I threw the caution tape aside. Parting hanger after hanger, I greeted the many lost sides of me:
A spaghetti strap tank top that I wore in summer school.
Damn you, trigonometry. But I did meet my first boyfriend there. Shockingly, I still did not pass . . .
A burgundy button down sweater from my student teacher days.
I watched Mr. Rogers in my formative years.
A suit from my first professional interview.
No, I did not get the job. Yes, I lived to tell the tale.
And an entire wardrobe dedicated to a collegiate who had a passion for hoodies and sweatpants.
What else should she wear while daydreaming in the library?
It is a well-known fact that sweats are the perfect attire for the procrastinator of an undergraduate, rite-of-passage, MLA formatted research paper.
Ah, to be a twenty-year-old, twinkly eyed dreamer lost in thoughts of her future beyond the long window pane that surveyed the incurable curve of Grymes Hill Road . . .
Sigh.
I wish that were the end of all my selves.
Aside from the dust bunnies — such as the ones that grew to enormous proportions under the heap of department store bags and my collection of lonely shoeboxes — I soon discovered a major misfortune to cleaning out closets.
You unearth skeletons.
Confession: Even bad memories are collectibles.
For some people, the worst offense in his or her closet is a bad outfit.
And you find yourself wondering, why do I own this outfit from 10+ years ago? A velour tracksuit? Oh my Night at the Roxbury nightmare.
Or is it wishful thinking? An ode to the glory days, the days of youth gone by?
I’m all for keeping your high school jersey.
Hey there, sports aficionados. (I’m more of a bookworm, who knew?)
For me, it’s my senior year, cream-colored cardigan with my name embroided in tan script — a subtle reminder, in case I forgot it during homeroom roll call.
Did I mention it was an all-girl high school? (Yes, four years in an all-girl Catholic academy — am I granted a hall pass to heaven?)
And I’ll even excuse that tourist clad t-shirt, the one you never wore again, the one from a fun-filled family vacation.
But what about those other memories:
What happens to the wedding album from a failed marriage?The collection of love letters from your first boyfriend?
Your middle school yearbook with that awful pubescent photo?
Here’s the dilemma:
You can toss these painful memories.
Or you can keep them and hold on to the only tangible pieces of evidence that these painful memories existed.
Like the old adage: out of sight, out of mind. Only existing in the deepest darkest cavern of my house for my own pitiful reassurance.
Am I alone in my thinking, reader?
I’d rather not have them sitting out on my front lawn. Where better to stash them away?
Confession: You can’t stand without your skeleton.
It was five years since I last saw it.
Five years since I last held it in my hands.
Five years since I placed it inside a painful greeting card.
Five years since I stashed the greeting card inside a blue canvas bag.
Five years since I threw the blue canvas bag to the back of my closet.
I had hoped that it would be found by Mr. Tumnus and left to the wintery world of Narnia.
Just as I wished that all mirrors lead to Wonderland.
Wouldn’t life be much easier that way?
I would have settled for an emergency exit. A trap door. Anywhere else to escape from that moment.
A moment that occurred on an autumn morning in 2012:
I had just celebrated my 29th birthday with my husband the prior evening. It had been an exciting few months for us — buying our first home and moving from Staten Island to New Jersey. I was adjusting to my new suburban life and enjoying the beginnings of adulthood.
On that morning, I could see all my pretty ducks: a white and downy hen followed by her yellow ducklings, a dear Pekin family, quacking in unison as they waddled forward in a single straight line.
I waved in gratitude.
I was still waving as we entered the doctor’s private office.
She wore a white lab coat with a pink stethoscope that twisted in her hand upon delivery:
I’m so sorry, but we were unable to detect a heartbeat.
I repeated that simple phrase over and over again. It continued to roll over and over again, churning up the contents of my celebratory dinner.
I could no longer see my team of ducks. They had floated out to sea.
Where was my paddle?
Death replaced my happy womb.
Why have you made my womb a tomb?
Blackness had swept over me, but for the first time, I didn’t have hold of the handle. I could not contain the emptiness.
I must
erase
banish
press delete . . .
On that afternoon, the day my life was thrown into uncertainty, I was determined to rewrite my life. Revise it. Circle my abdomen in red ink.
You don’t hang your failures on the fridge. The magnetic surface is reserved only for A’ s.
For failures and pain, you tuck those away.
I cleansed my house of all evidence, starting with the elephant in the room — the photographs that decorated the face of our refrigerator.
The same photos that were also displayed on my parents fridge, my in-laws fridge, and my grandparents fridge.
The same images I sent to all my family members and close friends.
Once a source of pride and joy, now blanketed by sadness and disappointment.
I placed the sonograms at the bottom of the blue canvas bag (provided to me by the OB-GYN practice) to keep company alongside the quintessential what-to-anticipate pregnancy book, samples of prenatal vitamins, and an assortment of anti-nausea lollipops.
Now, a sad testament to dust.
Back to the closet . . .
There they sat until after the birth of my daughter.
There they sat until after her baptism,
her first birthday,
second birthday,
her first day of nursery school;
there they sat until that hot afternoon in September.
I touched each one with the type of care bestowed on rare archeological finds. Afraid that with another touch they would crumble in my hands and I’d have to feel the aftermath once more: the fallout from the pain, emptiness, and then the months of bleakness that followed.
But this time, I stood up.
Confession: Clean is good but dust happens.
Remember learning about tabula rasa, the Latin term for clean slate?
Well, I think my closet is my new blackboard.
Forget those dry erase boards. I want a good old-fashioned chalkboard with an eraser that I can clap and then swirl around in its cloud of white dust.
After meeting up with my former selves — and most of us had a great time reminiscing, some others I left out because they were a snooze fest — I had a navel gazer realization:
My row of ducks was only an illusion.
None of us are truly in the driver’s seat; we’re only passengers. What’s real are the mistakes we make: our bruises, our tears, and our failures.
But also our dreams, our joys, and our triumphs.
Life will never be perfect. It may appear clean and orderly for periods of time, but dust will happen. That’s a guarantee.
After all, dust is made from us. It falls from our bodies and piles up in the corners of our lives.
Dust is human.
