October 13, 2006 

This was a day of doors flung wide; of windows lifted like a toast to autumn gusts and sunlight shimmering through sparkling wavy glass. Of shaking rugs in the open air and polishing old wood till it shone a deep amber. It was a day of housecleaning—the kind that only occurs once a year—and of deep satisfaction in my happy lot.

When we were first married and all my long-held and much-cherished ideals of homemaking were finally realized in a house to keep and a husband to love and look after, I approached the great undertaking of a yearly cleaning with relish. I regarded it with much the same energy as that displayed by my sister and me in our annual attack upon our little playhouse in my parent’s backyard: we would drag everything out into the first warm sunshine of the spring, scrub down our ‘Little Tykes’ refrigerator and sink and the small wooden chairs and table, wipe the two tiny four-over-four windows, and scour the six-by-eight floor with a zeal that would have made Cinderella blush. Then we would fill a #2 washtub with good soapy water and fling in our tin and plastic kitchen accouterments with abandon. After everything was dry—just about the time the sun had lowered behind the trees in our neighbor’s yard and the breeze turned suddenly chill and the aromas of supper were wafting out to us from the house—we’d give the floor a last sweep and put it all back in, satisfied that the sanitary standards were up to par for another season.    

But it’s a big jump from keeper of a one-room playhouse to chatelaine of a rambling old farmhouse, and I must confess, that first spring I found myself rather daunted by the magnitude of the task that lay before me. And I didn’t even have my sister to help wash the windows. But I had good examples in the way of books and friends, not to mention those of my mother and my mother-in-law. (Confessions of an Organized Homemaker by Deniece Schofield was a great boon that spring.)

In the years since I have honed my own principles of keeping house; I have learned to simplify my task list and I’ve had it out with my perfectionism (over and over and over again…). And I have discovered that spring cleaning is a chore in the spring. But it’s a delight in the autumn. In the spring I am all about garden beds and sprouting seedlings. I just want to be outside with my growing things. But in the autumn it is an absolute joy to prepare my home for the coming cold weather and inside days with a furious spree of cleaning. Every task carries for me its own sense of celebration, the glorious energy of October mornings and the fluttering joy of the coming holidays. The very smell of Scott’s Liquid Gold can make my heart beat faster…

I’ve also learned that I don’t like to do all of my cleaning in one big block like I used to. It’s just a breeding ground for perfectionism if I think that I have to finish it all within a given (and arbitrary) slot on the calendar. This year I tried something new: the Friday mornings of September and October have been given to the big once a year onslaught, and the tasks themselves have been broken up into reasonable chunks, divided over seven weeks or so. Each Friday I consult my master list and decide what I’m in the mood for that day, which only enhances the sense of pleasure in the work of my hands. And it also silences the clamor of other jobs which will get my attention on the next Friday…or the next…

One of the main points that Deniece makes in her book is that forethought is our greatest ally in the management of our homes, and I am only beginning to realize how true that is. Ten minutes of planning this year saved me hours of wearisome labor; the very act of limiting myself has, inexplicably, made for a joyful and productive autumn. I don’t think I’ll ever do my spring cleaning in the spring again.       

Of anyone, the great ‘St. Francis of Aberdeen’ ought to know…

“…Those you call fairies in your country are chiefly the young children of the flower fairies. They are very fond of having fun with the thick people, as they call you; for, like most children, they like fun better than anything else."

"Why do you have flowers so near you then? Do they not annoy you?"

"Oh, no, they are very amusing, with their mimicries of grown people, and mock solemnities. Sometimes they will act a whole play through before my eyes, with perfect composure and assurance, for they are not afraid of me. Only, as soon as they have done, they burst into peals of tiny laughter, as if it was such a joke to have been serious over anything. These I speak of, however, are the fairies of the garden. They are more staid and educated than those of the fields and woods. Of course they have near relations amongst the wild flowers, but they patronize them, and treat them as country cousins, who know nothing of life, and very little of manners. Now and then, however, they are compelled to envy the grace and simplicity of the natural flowers."

"Do they live in the flowers?" I said.

"I cannot tell," she replied. "There is something in it I do not understand. Sometimes they disappear altogether, even from me, though I know they are near. They seem to die always with the flowers they resemble, and by whose names they are called; but whether they return to life with the fresh flowers, or, whether it be new flowers, new fairies, I cannot tell. They have as many sorts of dispositions as men and women, while their moods are yet more variable; twenty different expressions will cross their little faces in half a minute. I often amuse myself with watching them, but I have never been able to make personal acquaintance with any of them. If I speak to one, he or she looks up in my face, as if I were not worth heeding, gives a little laugh, and runs away."

I may as well mention here, that the conclusion I arrived at from the observations I was afterwards able to make, was, that the flowers die because the fairies go away; not that the fairies disappear because the flowers die. The flowers seem a sort of house for them, or outer bodies, which they can put on or off when they please. Just as you could form some idea of the nature of a man from the kind of house he built, if he followed his own taste, so you could, without seeing the fairies, tell what any one of them is like, by looking at the flower till you feel that you understand it. For just what the flower says to you, would the face and form of the fairy say; only so much more plainly as a face and human figure can express more than a flower. For the house or the clothes, though like the inhabitant or the wearer, cannot be wrought into an equal power of utterance. Yet you would see a strange resemblance, almost oneness, between the flower and the fairy, which you could not describe, but which described itself to you. Whether all the flowers have fairies, I cannot determine, any more than I can be sure whether all men and women have souls.

George MacDonald, Phantastes

Philip and I have just recently returned from a New England adventure, consisting of a blissful week in a cottage in Maine and a mad-cap weekend in Boston with my sister and her husband.

Ten days becomes an eternity when there’s nothing to do but feast your eyes on gorgeous scenery and your mind on good books. How wonderful it was to flee for a while to a distant spot on the map, to entrust our home and our animals to dear friends, to be out of range of the tentacles of modern ‘connectivity’ and to be completely quiet. There were days in our little cottage that neither of us would speak a word for hours on end, so engrossed were we in our respective reading and writing and musing. And there were lovely escapades, as well: forays into the breathtaking country-side and the drama of Acadia National Park. Crystalline days and famous Maine fog…

I prayed fervently before we left that God would refresh me while we were away. That He would literally restore my soul, dimly realizing that the restoration Psalm 23 speaks of entails repentance as well as rejuvenation, a sort of reinstatement in grace. It’s so easy to lose our footing, even on the firm, sure ground provided for us, and sometimes the only way to see things clearly as they are is to be uprooted from our physical surroundings and familiarities. To wake up in the morning and gaze with wondering eyes on country we’ve never seen before; to sit long on a shore hitherto unknown and drink deep of a breeze scented strangely with evergreen and salt. Some of the most distinctive and clear-sighted moments in my life have been while traveling, and though my affectionate soul will probably always hold that ‘home-keeping hearts are happiest’, I cherish the opportunities I’ve had to see more of the world than the blessed corner of it I call my own.

Late in the week I made a pan of gingerbread for breakfast and as the sweet spice wafted through our little cottage I felt a fleeting stab of homesickness. I welcomed it with a thrill, glad to be refreshed enough for a wistful thought of all that I had left behind; glad, too, that my retreat had yet a fine stretch of days ahead, and that what lay at its end was so inescapably dear to me. A happiness beyond my happiness.

The re-entry was admittedly rough; there were tears shed leaving the cottage, leaving my sister in Boston, leaving the ground in the airplane. The morning that Philip went back to work was very blue indeed. But there was Caspian tripping me up all day in his delight at our return. There were four cats to be won over again and nine chickens who all came bundling towards me when they spotted me in the yard. There was my beloved brown teapot and my piano and my sun-splashed kitchen. And there was my view from the windows, one I’d not exchange for anything.

So, it was a marvelous trip and I am brimming with thoughts to ponder and process, for I knew instinctively even while I was there that I wouldn’t fully receive it all till I was home again. And more than likely some of it will spill over here.