people who live in ranch houses should be able to wash their own windows.
or i should.
that’s what i decided this morning, staring out at the bright, brassy day through windows streaked with dirt, rain, cobwebs, and something i like to think of as guano. This was on the outside, mind you. On the inside: only the fingerprints of my family, and the paw and tongue prints of our whippet, Honor, who has this summer established himself as Grimm’s Valiant Little Tailor, charmed or cursed (depending on your perspective) into a sight hound’s lithe, lean, whip-it-good form, capturing as he has, with his intent gaze and then—flick!—a lick of his tongue, innumerable flies. Honor’s profound, carnivorous instinct—look, protein on the wing!—has become our entertainment. it’s gripping, really, watching the dog work. un-saint francis-like, we cheer him on to victory.
but, oh, look what he’s left on the glass. that’s what i thought this morning.
and then my own instinct (nice word for compulsion?) kicked in. never mind the heat index—high nineties, if not low hundreds.
i’ve done this before, undertaken the right chore on what many would consider the wrong day. at our previous house—not a traditional ranch built in 1957 (we painted our rooms fiesta wear colors, just because), but an American Four Square, built in 1917 (with walls that benefited from multiple color washes, to disguise the bulging plaster)—i broke ground and laid a garden bed on a long weekend in early August when the Chicago Bears were dropping like . . . well, not like flies beneath the lash of Honor’s tongue. More like, well, you can imagine.
at any rate, once in a while when i get a project under my skin i feel all itchy until it’s completely done. this morning, no matter how i tried, i could not get comfortable looking up and out. good grief, i thought, standing at the sink, gazing glumly through various spatterings at the neighbor’s house while i rinsed french toast batter from a bowl. ick, i decided, watching Greg shuttle Teo off to play with a friend—or not Greg and Teo, so much, but all the layers on the glass that got in the way.
finally, i walked honor, just to get out instead of looking out. it wasn’t so bad in the shade, really. not really. and then i saw our elderly neighbor, Tom, walking his elderly dog, Chauncy (who moves and looks very much like a four-legged muppet). Tom confided that his air-conditioning was broken. i asked Tom to please consider our house his own personal cooling station. Tom said he was fine. “I’m busy with household projects,” he said. “Fixing air-conditioners. Cleaning up. That kind of thing. It’s a beautiful day!”
Well, i thought, leading panting, sun-subdued Honor up the driveway. If Tom can do household projects on a hot day in July and still think the world more beautiful for it, so can i.
so i got a wet rag, a roll of paper towels, a bottle of cleanser, another bottle of drinking water. i lugged the ladder from the garage. already i was sweating. i put on a pair of smelly gardening gloves, which were not designed to breathe. i am designed to breathe, though. so i set up the ladder beneath a window. the ladder is old, spattered with all our many color washes and fiesta wear colors. the ladder is rickety. my stance precarious, i began to wash the storms.
soon enough, i realized that Tom was a saint.
i tried various mental tricks. the one that worked best was: you like heat yoga? look at you, stretching, bending, sweating! the world is your bikram studio, only it’s free!
that helped for a little bit. then i got stuck in the yews. pushed in a storm. sat down by a spider and almost stayed there.
honor was watching me from inside the kitchen, paws on the windowsill, nose to the glass.
why clean anything up if it’s only going to get dirty again? i found myself wondering.
then i saw Tom’s wife, Annette, patiently watering their tiger lilies. they have an abundance of the flowers lining their driveway, the bright orange blaring like so many trumpets.
roused, not so much by the loud color but by Annette, gently sweeping a spray of water back and forth, back and forth, i got to my feet again and finished the job.
it’s not perfect. (i think i neglected to mention: i washed windows for a summer in college with a whole crew of malcontents. we used razors to scrape back paint. we used newspaper to wipe the glass clean; supposedly that works best. we read a lot of kurt vonnegut, which we discussed through mists of vinegar and ire.) yes, i missed a few places. but i can see clearer now, as the old song goes. in a sweaty way, i feel a little cleaner, too.
look, there’s Honor’s nose to the glass. he loves looking out so. maybe he can see clearer too—not just the flies buzzing and bumbling right in front of him, but what lies beyond, beckoning.
