Scrub a Dub Dub

I hate to clean. Scratch that. I hate to clean in a house with a husband, two children, and a dog. It feels like you never get ahead. You go into one room and work your scrubbing magic. Return a mere 15 minutes later and it's back to chaos. Grrrr!

It isn't all their fault, I'll admit. My love-hate relationship with cleaning has been years in the making. Childhood even. You see, my mom, she is a crazy cleaner. A scrubber. A put-on-those-ugly-plastic-gloves-and-scrub-the-daylights-out-of-something kind of woman. My mom would scrub when angry, frustrated, or sad. Our house always shined.

I had a few chores, too. My mom would leave the perfectly typed list dangling from the fridge listing three chores for each day. The chores I was assigned always involved organizing (my better love!), picking up, or putting away, but never scrubbing. Deep cleaning was her mission and an escape from life's frustrations.

My escape? Books. I would spend all day reading, lost in the world of someone else's imagination, and then rush through my chores the last few minutes before my mom returned home. It was a neck-breaking race to the finish line. It was never rewarding, but it always got done. Even to this day, I would rather be lost in a story than a sink full of suds. This is, perhaps, why my house never shines.

This week, however, I am tackling a new cleaning strategy. I printed off a cleaning schedule I found with three chores in the morning and then three different chores at night, rotating items seven days a week. If you do those simple chores each day, your house is pretty much cleaned top-to-bottom in one week. Then begin again. Shiny, shiny, shiny.

So far, it's been good. Not amazing, of course, but more manageable, and the productive feeling of keeping a shiny house is coming back to me. I also love my perfectly typed chore list dangling from my fridge. It reminds me of a woman who worked hard and did an amazing job, so I could spend time in faraway places, dreaming my big dreams. 

Here's to paying it forward with a happier heart. I sure hope I can keep up.

Sorting Out My Life

My mom has been cleaning out her basement, which means she's been sending box after box of childhood mementos my way. She has saved every piece of artwork, certificate, pen pal letter, medal, grade card, poem or graded paper that I took home. It's a lot of stuff. For someone not into clutter, such as myself, it's pure torture to dig through.

If there is any good that comes from sorting junk, I have found some common themes emerge from my childhood. First, I loved things with my name on it. I have pencils, bags and notebooks with my name everywhere. Heather. Heather Boehmer. Heather Dawn Boehmer. I must have liked the way my name looked in print. Ironically, I still kind of feel that way. My secret wish is to see my name on the cover of book, hopefully with "national bestseller" right above it.

Secondly, I was a prolific writer. I wrote letters to friends in the summer, random pen pals, journal entries, notes to family members, poem after poem after poem (all terrible, by the way), and many short stories. The writing wasn't terrific, but I was amazed by the kind, encouraging words of my teachers. "Keep at it, you've got great potential," one wrote on my paper. They believed in me before I knew to believe in myself.

I also realized how much my mom relished every part of my journey. She kept every word, every picture, every award. She was so proud of me. While I've written often of the struggle growing up with single, teenage mother, I'm not sure I've accurately conveyed what an amazing woman my mother is. She is humble, funny and kind. She has never, not even for one small second, given up on me, though my actions would have tested the most patient soul. I guess I'm thankful she's let me sort out my life at my own pace.

At the bottom of the last box I went through tonight, I found a poem I had written in the ninth grade with a green honorable mention ribbon stapled to it. I don't remember the poem or the ribbon, but it reminded me of the dreamer I used to be. Still am, I guess, in many ways. Here's hoping we can all grow into something special and keep working on the big dream. If it's super unrealistic, well, then I think you're definitely headed in the right direction.

Lament for the Non-Dreamers

by Heather Boehmer, 9th grade

They never seem to look beyond today

or wish for anything unrealistic.

A second of their time is not wasted

on such foolish measures

as daydreaming a tomorrow.

Their lives are synchronized into patterns,

which are colored black and white.

Their eyes are closed to all the magic and beauty

that is soundly sleeping behind the closed doors of their imagination.