Some Luck

I girl-cleaned my house early this morning. If that statement sounds derogatory in any manner to you, let me allow that my meaning is every bit the opposite. Girl-cleaning is deep cleaning. This means lifting all of the rugs before sweeping. Girl-cleaning requires mopping floors, scrubbing the toilet with cleaning agents scented like lemon or pine, putting out new towels—the works. My standard boy-cleaning is something slightly less than that. Okay, if you wish to get all word-smithy and technical, boy-cleaning is a whole lot less.

In boy-cleaning mode, I quickly wipe around everything sitting on the tables and countertop, never bothering to lift the toaster or spice rack or anything else to catch below or behind. When dusting, I tend to tap at everything with my Swiffer—almost the gentle way you expect a good-fairy to tap her magic wand—hoping the dust will vanish. I have toyed with the idea of duct-taping rags and feather-dusters to my cats so I might enlist their help, but, ultimately, I fear that this might be the one application were even duct tape might fail. Cats are tenacious and really whiney. Duct tape is no match. In boy-cleaning: I engage in sweeping only. No mopping. Boy-cleaning is quick and, well, I suppose efficient might be a stretch. The point here is the effort, not getting your house clean in any technical sense.

While cleaning our entry this morning, I found under the throw there, the three Chinese coins Uyen always left hidden underneath. The coins, three brassy-types with a square hole in the center, are all evenly spaced on a length of red ribbon that has been fished through their centers. Uyen placed them at that spot for good luck. I’m not certain if this good luck token stems from feng shui or from some other cultural sensibility found her South-Asian upbringing. I have, in similar fashion in my house, crystals and chimes dangling over doors, a mirror on the eve outside facing the road, beds facing specific directions, and strict orders to never set shoes on a table. She thought these placements and habits very important. And, dammit, if she thought them important: they are. I have not changed any of these things since her passing. But today, when I bent and lifted the ribbon, one of the coins tankled ever so lightly back down to the tile, broken into three distinct continents. I did not place the remaining two coins under the throw after cleaning, fearing that only two coins might somehow be wrong luck under there. I now have the two coins hanging from a plant stand near the front door. I am hoping my guessing at luck with two of them is better than no luck at all.

--Mitchell Hegman