A Clean Break

I thought the world was self-cleaning. At least for the first twenty or so years of my life. I knew people cleaned because I knew it was their job description at the hotels in which I lived, but somehow I never thought I should be involved. Perhaps it was because from an early age I was told not to interfere with anyone while they were working. I lived in a world which was prescribed by what you did.  All the jobs were important. Without each person it would not run well and people would be disappointed and they would not come back and my dad would lose his job, again. Except he never lost his job because he outperform expectations. He lost them because the owners sold the hotels and the new people brought in their own management.

I bring this up because a few years back I found a letter from a former college roommate.  I had known her since the sixth grade, and we had been great friends and then became people who knew each other. She left in a huff at the end of April our junior year in college.  We were renting an apartment near ASU and had one more month to go on our lease. That last month was paid for already and so I was surprised when I came back from class, and she was gone and there was just a note.  I knew why she was upset, we (our group of friends that flew gliders and worked at the sailport) did not approve of her boyfriend.  She was dating the brother of the man she was in love with, and we believed it unfair to him. He was just back from Vietnam and not in a good space.  She moved in with him and then ultimately married him, but not for long.

I was upset that she had gone. Not so much because I would miss the person she had become, but because she believed we had been unkind.  I had not, but the pilot boys from the sailport had been quite salty and direct about their feelings when unbeknownst to us, my roommate and her partner were not out, but in their bedroom.  Ooops. All I had remembered from the letter was that she was angry about the comments and that someone had carved “fuck” into her candle.  I had done none of those things.

When I read it again forty plus years later, I found out that she was also upset because I had never cleaned the apartment.  Never mopped the floors. Never cleaned the bathroom.  She was right. I had not. The letter stated that she was cleaning all the time and I never offered.  Again, hit the nail on the head.

Here was the problem.  She never cleaned when I was home. Not once during the eight months we shared the apartment did she say, “Your turn to clean” or “Heather can you clean the bathroom.” Not one conversation regarding the matter. My thought was, “Why would I clean when it is already clean?”  My whole life, things were just clean.  I would have understood better if she had not known me for nine years by then.  She had been at the hotel many times. She knew my lifestyle.  She was smart enough to know that maybe, just maybe, I did not know it was something I now had to do. Instead, she chose to be angry with me regarding something about which I was clueless. I also thought, if you wanted someone to clean and you did not want to speak up, you might want to let it get a bit dirtier and see if I notice.  There was a chance.

My best friend from eighth grade moved in the for the last free month so she could get out of the sorority dorm. We were heading to Costa Rica for the summer and then getting our own apartment in “Sin City.” The year I lived with her, I learned all about vacuuming, scrubbing and not putting knives into plugged in toasters. She took the time to show me how and I was a willing if not especially talented student.

So often we assume that people can read our minds. We do not take the time or energy to ask or question. It was a good lesson for me, but then I have never really been one to not ask a lot of questions.