Vacuuming

At the end of the day, vacuuming is all about the parallel lines. I give you three vignettes.

Oliver as a Teenage

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I remember well the day that my older brother Matthew left for college. As he boarded the people mover at Dulles International Airport my older brother Jared and I sang the Hallelujah chorus while my mother bawled and kept telling us to stop, that we were being mean. This, unfortunately, made us sing all the harder, laughing as we tormented our mother and bid adieu to our brother. When I got home, I moved my stuff from the upstairs bedroom down to the room Matthew had vacated in the basement. At this point I should probably mention the burn stains in the carpet and the scorched ceiling tiles, but this post isn't about Matthew and his chemistry exploits, it's about vacuuming.

I rearranged the room, hung up my posters, and started enjoy life two floors away from my parents. I had graduated to the big leagues, and I was excited. Not one to clean his room on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, quarterly I would get the bug to clean. This entailed emptying my room of all furniture, vacuuming the entire room multiple times, then bringing the furniture back in a different configuration. I have fond memories of my rearranged rooms. (Rearranging furniture was something I did often to most rooms in the house. Something about spacial relations and thinking about different uses for the space.) And when I vacuumed, there were always parallel lines in the carpet to show. I remember vacuuming the living, family, and dining room and obsessing over every part of the room, figuring out the way to vacuum myself out of the room with a perfect, pristine floor, each vacuum line in the carpet perfectly parallel or perpendicular to the next. Nothing better visually complete a room.

Oliver as a College Student

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One summer during college two friends came to visit, Will and Randi. After a few days of mayhem at my parents house we had to clean up the place as my mother was coming back in town. (My mom, travelling? Shock.) Randi and Will offered to pitch in. I set Will to vacuuming the living room. I came in halfway through and had a mini-freakout. Will vacuums like Kristin does: stand in the middle of the room and run the vacuum over the carpet in no clear pattern. As I stood there trying to explain to Will that vacuuming didn't work unless there were lines in the carpet, with Will not understanding how this matters, Randi stepped in and took over. She realized that Will, the consumate engineer, viewed both ways as equally effective and that he would never understand my neurosis.

Oliver as a Father

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Last Thursday, the effects of a child who wanders with food were making me jump out of my skin, so I spent an hour vacuuming the living room. To give you proper perspective, Kristin can vacuum the room in ten to fifteen minutes. I passed over most areas twice, if not three times, and moved all the furniture to get maximum access. The lines were beautiful. The carpet felt soft and plush. You could hear the cleanliness of the carpet. Debbie appropriately admired my handiwork while Kristin rolled her eyes. Then on Saturday, while we were rearranging the upstairs rooms, I spent twenty minutes vacuuming one bedroom. I emptied the canister three times so I could watch the dust swirl and collect as I passed over the room time and time again. And though you may mock, that room looks amazing. Clara's new room is clean, fit for my beautiful daughter.

And there were parallel lines. Oh, yes, there were parallel lines.