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Tending to things

As things (and bodies) around the house get older, they require tinkering, adjustments that to others must seem strange, obsessive, and probably not worth the effort. But to each, their own. Every adjustment is an act of familiarity, a recognition of individual needs, an act of loyalty. An act of love.

Take, for example, the kitchen tap. This, along with its vassal, the sink which can only gaze blankly upwards at its powerful lord, has long been a no-go area for me. Too much depends on their willing cooperation to risk any bumbly attempts by my aging fingers to right their wrongs. The positioning of their innards is proof of that; we elderly are not meant to contort, and something tells me that taps and their minions know that. Why else would the various bolts and wrench-resisting nuts be located far enough underneath their bellies that, not only are they difficult to see (let alone find), but the finer points of their mechanisms are placed just beyond the average focal length of an aging human eye.

The reflected grin of the falling drops that hang so cheekily from the faucet and their drumming on the sink’s metallic skin are suspicious, too; the pattern of their irritating cadence can’t be just coincidental. They seem to know it will spur me into retributive action, but it is only later when I remember that I have tried that all before and that, short of an expensive plumber, I am powerless to control my fate.

Nevertheless, it is a game that begs for compromise; I have long suspected that the two of them conspire to tease me. Usually, I intuit that it is the angle at which the handle of the tap handle is inclined that determines the rhythm of the drops but it is really only a Pyrrhic victory; recently I have got it down to as little as one drop per minute but, although I am still inclined to leave the room for fear of obsessing on the expected sound, for me that is only a minor capitulation -more of a consensual agreement, I suppose. At any rate, I feel I have regained some of my agency although I admit that I have also lost a bit to the tap.

Another problem that is always grumbling in my closets are the hangers. For years I have used the inexpensive self-tangling metal variety because, in a pinch, I can unravel one of them and then bend it into shapes conducive to retrieving any lint that accumulates just out of reach inside the door of the drier. Not only that, but a properly bent hangar is perfect for retrieving things that have somehow disappeared down the drain in my bathroom sink. I am not married, and I am old, so I don’t have to worry much about jewellery or a wedding ring which, after washing my hands, might slip off when I dry my fingers on the towel. Anyway, I’m no longer concerned about losing sundry and unnecessary appurtenances these days; nevertheless stuff does occasionally disappear down the hole.

I have taken to covering the opening with a little wire sieve I found in the Dollar Store, but whenever I trim my beard, the mesh gets clogged and I have to remove it to get the hair out. Sometimes, I forget to put it back before I clean my teeth, and stuff can go rolling down the opening. I mean, who would have thought that the little brush-thing that fits on the end of my automatic toothbrush could possibly fit through the hole? It only happened once, though. I take the brush off each time to time to clean it of course, but my hands are obviously wet and toothpaste is notoriously slippery, eh? Anyway, once it was on its way down to the big U trap under the sink, it was game over unless I got it out quickly. This, precisely, is why I have never invested in hoity-toity rigid fashion hangers or the plastic things that look nice but are useless unless you just want to hang clothes or something.

Admittedly, losing things in the hole is not a frequent occurrence, but it’s nice to think there is a ready solution hiding in the closet. Uhmm, well, I couldn’t actually hook the little tooth-brushette up from the U (a design flaw on the part of the Oral B company perhaps), but I did manage to unscrew the ungainly-looking pipe after a few minutes of sweating and was amazed at how much else had dropped down there unbeknownst to me. Most of it, including the toothbrush head, I judged it wiser to throw away, but I did find the nether end of an old wire hangar I must have given up on years before and forgotten about; so it wasn’t an uneventful journey. My bathroom sink empties in a maelstrom nowadays, too.

Okay, I suppose I should admit it: not everything in a house requires an act of love; that’s why there was a time when I employed cleaners to come in every week or two. The process seemed easy to them. Four young women, just out of high school I think, would roar up the driveway in their minivan and scatter around the house, singing and talking for an hour and then fold their tents and silently steal away. They seemed to enjoy it; I mean, how hard could it be?

The affable group disbanded shortly after I retired, however, and I began to realize just how difficult their job actually was. Of course, guilt played a large role in my observation I’m pretty sure; stuff didn’t sparkle like it used to any more. The hardwood floors seemed dull, and crumbs were a way of life in the kitchen. If I made the mistake of looking too closely, there was a thickening patina of dust over once-bright surfaces. It was no longer satisfying to sit on a sofa to read or snooze when even the air churned up with the turning of a page encouraged dust to head for my otherwise contented nostrils. And, frankly, I tired of continually having to bend down to pick up lint on the carpets.

I have to confess that I hate dusting, but I hate vacuuming even more; I suspect it’s because the vacuum cleaner I inherited when my mother moved into the Elder Care Home, is not a recent model. It’s so noisy I have to wear headphones, and the dust it stirs up inevitably requires me to hunt around for one of my fraying Covid masks. Also, it has too many ungainly appendages that seem to catch on every piece of furniture I pass in each room. Oh, and its cord keeps pulling out each time I round a corner. I mean they must have worked out the bugs since she bought the thing, eh? Maybe I should stick to a broom and a moist rag…

I suppose, though, that it boils down to a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils: whether t’would be nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous dusting, or to take the vacuum cleaner against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, clean them. Uhmm, sorry Hamlet.

Anyway, the other day, I had a temporary soupçon of hope, a brief candle flicker that a friend quickly snuffed: I thought perhaps I could hold a house-cleaning party every so often. But, as he quickly interjected before I became too excited, he felt sure that his wife wouldn’t understand why he would go traipsing off to clean somebody else’s place when there was so much work needing to be done at home.

Dust springs eternal though, eh? Maybe I should just get one of those Roomba things…

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