my bean, he likes to clean
He loves brooms, mops, the dishwasher, all varieties of soap, buckets and sponges.
Mommy, I want to wash. Mommy, I want to sweep. Mommy, why don’t you use the dishwasher? These are some of the first sentences he ever spoke.
He was about eight months old when I went back to work. Carol, whose primary task was ostensibly to take care of my grandmother who was dying of Parkinson’s, decided that her time at our house would now be dedicated to Bean. And since her third primary task was to cook and clean, Carol and my son spent many days together mopping, sweeping and doing the laundry. Since he was fourteen months old, he has been helping us hand-wash dishes.
After Carol went home for the day and before I got home from work, Bean would spend time with his grandmother. If you’ve ever spent more than three weeks in the tropics you know that the cleaning is never done. Our house had about thirty non-consecutive feet of verandah, and windows that were always open, letting in the breeze but also the insects and the salt that rose up from the bay. Always open unless it was raining, of course. The first tippling sound of rain quickly became a trigger for just jumping up from whatever you were doing and running around the house closing all the doors and windows. My mom often did it with not-yet-walking Bean tucked under her arm.
Then, on weekends, he’d watch his father clean. Bean’s daddy is Jah’s gift to laundry. So much so that I was banned from washing his white shirts. Banned! I couldn’t get them bright enough.
The point of this random Grenada memory is that right at this very moment I’m sitting at my desk, looking through the sliding doors at him in the driveway, happier than a clam because he’s carrying one of those enormous brooms that’s like three inches by three feet. And I’m thinking that because he spent so much time when he was very little cleaning with people he loved, he’s likely going to be all about cleaning for the rest of his life.
I can’t relate. I might even be a little jealous.
Posted on May 6th, 2010 under Grenada • Tags: caribbean, cleaning, family, Grenada, joaquin the illustrious bean. • 
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May 6th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
i can’t clean without thinking of my grandfather. i used to help him clean his apartment because his arthritis was too bad to do it himself. i grumbled about it at first…but they wound up being some of the best afternoons i’ve ever had.
May 7th, 2010 at 3:35 am
Last night on the airplane, after take-off, she ate her supper, then took the butt-wipe I used to clean her up, and started to clean. Wiped the seat-back-table. Got off her seat and wiped it. Sat on my lap and repeatedly cleaned the window (polishing it with a kleenex). Started on the seat-back-table in front of me, and the back of the chair. The guy next to us was totally bemused. And don’t get me started on her obsession with the hoover (vacuum cleaner)- one of her first words was Vava, indicating said hoover!