{"id":218,"date":"2010-11-01T20:16:40","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T15:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/2010\/11\/01\/cleaning\/"},"modified":"2010-11-01T20:16:40","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T15:16:40","slug":"cleaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/cleaning\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/span>White vinegar, Citrasolv, and water.\u00a0 This is my cleaning solution of choice, and cleaning, it turns out, is about all I\u2019m good for these days.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of other things I should be working on, so many tasks left undone over the last few weeks, while my heart and hands and attention have been elsewhere.\u00a0 I\u2019ve lost a friend and also, I realize now, a clear sense of my own purpose.\u00a0 She needed me. I was there. How simple is that? It\u2019s been just over a week since she died, and now, of course, it\u2019s time for the rest of us to keep going. \u00a0Except that I can’t quite figure out where I’m headed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m home again, but it\u2019s hard to focus, hard to even care much about the to-do list. Here in New Hampshire, the leaves have all fallen from the trees, and the world beyond my kitchen window looks as stark and barren as my own inner landscape. \u00a0I don’t want to go out to lunch with friends, or work on my book proposal, or write that speech for next week. \u00a0Cleaning, however, feels wonderful.\u00a0 And so I dust, I vacuum, I wet-mop the floor.\u00a0 Things really do look good enough.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t stop myself.\u00a0 I grab a pile of soft rags — Jack\u2019s beloved old cloud sheets from when he was ten, ripped up now and stuffed into the rag bag — and get down on my hands and knees.\u00a0 The smell of vinegar and orange soothes my senses.\u00a0 It\u2019s a relief\u00a0 to do something with a visible outcome, to feel some measure of accomplishment somewhere, to transform all this love and heartbreak into a job that supports our life in the here and now.\u00a0 The sun pours in.\u00a0 The floor gleams golden. My tears flow, and the soft cloud-sheet rags wipe them away.\u00a0 This is work I can do without thinking, work that satisfies some deep yearning for all that is constant and familiar and necessary.\u00a0 Someone needs to get the crumbs out of the cracks, the smushed raspberries off the counter, the scum out of the sink.\u00a0 It might as well be me.<\/p>\n

Life, death, and everything in between — it is all such a mystery.\u00a0 For today perhaps it is enough just to be at ease with things as they are. Perhaps it is simply time to cry and clean the house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

White vinegar, Citrasolv, and water.\u00a0 This is my cleaning solution of choice, and cleaning, it turns out, is about all I\u2019m good for these days. There are plenty of other things I should be working on, so many tasks left undone over the last few weeks, while my heart and hands and attention have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,31,32,5,39,40,14],"tags":[123,201,209,295],"class_list":{"0":"post-218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-acceptance","8":"category-grief","9":"category-healing","10":"category-hearth-home","11":"category-midlife","12":"category-mindfulness","13":"category-soul-work","14":"tag-cleaning","15":"tag-grief-2","16":"tag-healing-2","17":"tag-mindfulness-2","18":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}