The White Glove Test

The White Glove Test

(from 2011)

          My cousin Nanny tells a great story. Nanny was a new mother with a sweet baby girl. Our Aunt Anna was coming to call. Aunt Anna is a kind, loving lady but she had a reputation for having a perfectly clean and neat house, despite having three children.  Nanny cleaned her house from top to bottom, ready for the ‘white glove test’ she was sure was coming. 

         

Then, in the middle of the night the day before the visit, Nanny got up to make a bottle for the baby. This was long before the days of microwaves and involved putting water in a pan on the stove, then setting the bottle of milk in the hot water to warm. 

 Sleep-deprived from caring for an infant and exhausted from a day of scrubbing, Nanny fell asleep while the bottle was warming – forgetting to turn off the burner. Whoosh! The bottle exploded. Milk covered walls, floor and ceiling. She spent the rest of the night re-scrubbing the kitchen. 

         

I always laugh at that story because I understand both sides. I, like Aunt Anna, like things neat and clean. And like Nanny, I worry about what others will think if everything isn’t spic and span. 

But then I remember author Erma Bombeck.

         

Bombeck wrote: “No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.” And “My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?” 

Erma got it right. You can kill yourself cleaning and no one will ever notice.

Aunt Anna, God love her, never even looked at that house. She only had eyes for baby Joellen. 

Who wears ‘white gloves’ when holding a cooing infant? 

         

When I visit my friends with little ones, I don’t see the fingerprints on the fridge or the towels on the floor. I look around and see artwork displayed and photos adorning every wall and surface. I find comfortable chairs and crowded kitchen tables. I see packed calendars and much loved pets.

Just like Aunt Anna, I focus on the happy kids and the loving parents

         

It turns out that Erma was a fabulous housekeeper too. But as she neared the end of her life she wrote: “If I had my life to live over… I would have invited friends over to dinner even when the carpet was stained and the sofa was faded…  I would have eaten popcorn in the ‘good’ living room and worried less about the dirt when someone wanted to light the fireplace…. I would seize every minute, look at it and really see it … .live it and never give it back.” 

 

Aunt Anna, well into her nineties, is still fastidious, but the only thing we see when we walk in her door is the wide smile on her face and her welcoming arms. 

(In Memory: Aunt Anna left us this week. I often visited her with my husband and daughter and she was always thrilled to see us. We will miss her greatly. She taught us what it meant to love freely and fully. May she rest in heaven – which may spruce itself up a bit now that she is there.)