British actress Olivia Colman won an Oscar Sunday night, and in her acceptance speech (which is quite charming, by the way) said something lovely:
“I used to work as a cleaner and I loved that job,” she said. “And I did spend quite a lot of my time imagining this.”
Aside from being all sorts of inspiring, Colman’s reminiscence reminded me of the opening scene of another Oscar nominee, the movie “Roma,” in which sudsy water splashes across a dirty tiled floor for approximately five minutes. It’s strange at first, but quickly turns hypnotic.
The sudsy water then reminded me of a quote from a short story by writer Lucia Berlin, which we came across as we worked on “Lost and Found,” one of the photo essays in HOME. It’s the opening line of her short story “Mourning,” from her collection A Manual for Cleaning Women:
“I love houses, all the things they tell me, so that’s one reason I don’t mind working as a cleaning woman. It’s just like reading a book.”
It’s funny how memory works, especially when it fixates on a theme. Berlin’s words reminded me of Saturday mornings when I was a kid, when my family cleaned the house. My brother and I alternated vacuuming and dusting, while our mom tackled the kitchen and bathrooms and dad did the yard work, minor repairs, stuff like that. We were a family cleaning machine and the routine was ironclad. I’d like to say I kept with it as an adult, but no. I’ll do almost anything to avoid cleaning, let alone make a routine of it. It’s just not that high on my list.
Contrast this with a close friend of mine who finds her zen in vacuuming. Another friend prefers washing dishes over using her dishwasher, explaining that the warm soapy water feels good on her hands. Still another friend loves mowing and edging his yard, reveling in the order created from overgrown grass and scattered weeds.
I can appreciate their affinity for these everyday tasks, and the quiet comfort of familiar routine. The mindless repetition of washing, wiping, tidying and cleaning offers us quiet moments to think, to remember, to work through a problem, to imagine winning an Oscar.
We bring these parts of us into being over a sinkful of dishes, or while folding a basket of laundry, or even shoveling snow that accumulates a few inches in February. These tasks are part of what makes a home, the routine responsibilities that when you think about it offer their own grace. They give us permission to think, for our minds to wander to places that matter most.