Dispatch from Forbearance Presbyterian Church
By Charlotte Johnstone
The Great Clean-up
Day
If someone who lived with or understood either woman had chosen
the cochairs of Forbearance's Great Clean-Up Day, GraceWeisner
and Molly Atkins wouldn't have been paired to lead the effort
to finally rid the church building of years of unwanted and unused
junk that was crammed into cupboards, cabinets and forgotten
storage spaces. It was, however, Rev. Hustisford who made that
call and, while he knew a great deal about their lives in general,
he had no way of knowing that they were contradictory in terms
of household management styles. He thought they would be an efficient
team and, as it turned out, they were. A perfect recycling team.
A revolving door of competing instincts. Grace's impulse was
to unload, pare down and unclutter, while Molly never met anything
she didn't believe she could turn into something else. Where
one saw rubbish, the other saw "possibilities.
Grace, you see, was a recovering
saver and reformed pack rat-
a woman who, in a domestic epiphany some time ago, had weeded
her closets, basement and attic of everything that had gone unworn
or unused for at least a year. In an orgy of personal redefinition
following a difficult divorce, she had transformed her home from
its former overstuffed décor to one of sleek surfaces,
spare ornamentation and minimal fuss. She became immune to the
siren songs of gadgets, thingamajigs and whatchamacallits. She
no longer believed she would lose the twenty pounds necessary
to wear all the clothes hanging in the spare bedroom closet.
She couldn't imagine how her kitchen cupboards had become choked
with enough utensils to run a full-service restaurant. What could
have possibly motivated the purchase of that giant meat slicer
big enough to carve up a whole cow? Why, she wondered, had she
somehow acquired three salad spinners, four vacuum cleaners,
an electric garlic peeler and a utility closet where it seemed
that every cleaning product ever created had gone to die? And
then there was the basement-her ultimate horror with, among other
things, old roller skates, dog leashes and dog beds for dogs
long gone, seven pairs of skis, empty packing boxes, paint cans
from every house she'd ever lived in, her son's old football
pads, carpet remnants from other places, canning jars from the
only time she'd tried to make applesauce, six broken lamps, headless
dolls, three potty chairs and an old sofa that, at one time,
she'd meant to "do something with."
Out it all went. Out, too, went the two-speed turbo-drive tie
rack, the motorized bagel slicer, the home body-fat analyzer,
the multiple-message recorder with its manual she couldn't understand,
the digital 100-year calendar, three calcified garden hoses,
four old slipcovers and six sets of drapes, eight boxes of books
that didn't deserve to be read twice, her daughter's old prom
dresses, skimpy mini things and droopy maxi things, boxes of
hair curlers, a wheelbarrow with no wheel and an astonishing
number of coffee mugs with logos from every place she'd ever
been. Out to the curb it all went and two days later it was all
gone-apparently snatched up by itinerant rummage seekers who
couldn't believe their luck. Grace, meanwhile, had done what
she always wanted to do-tilt the house and let everything loose
slide out. From now on, she vowed, she was traveling light.
Molly, however, was the yin
to Grace's yang.
Perhaps because she was a first-grade teacher and a dedicated
craft hobbyist, Molly saw useful potential in nearly everything.
She regularly saved articles about "Gifts You Can Make for
Under $2," "200 Uses For Nylon Net" and "Hidden
Treasures Made New Again." Her basement, attic and closets
were overflowing with possibilities-boxes of buttons, jars of
beads, stacks of fabric remnants, cores from paper towel rolls,
shelves of old National Geographics, drawers of yarn and thread,
stickers and glue pots, old wallpaper rolls, notebooks of recipes
she was sure she would get around to, quilts and knitting projects
in transit, reupholstering candidates, broken frames she judged
redeemable and a shoe box of twine labeled "Strings Too
Short To Use." As far as Molly was concerned, almost anything
had the potential to enjoy a beneficial afterlife and her mantra
was "You never know when that might come in handy."
The convergence of these two women on Forbearance's Great Clean-Up
Day produced, of course, the inevitable-the heap amassed at the
church's curb of what Grace declared useless junk was steadily
reduced in size by Molly as she somewhat stealthily returned
nearly everything to the building. Molly was sure those two old
typewriters would delight Forbearance's kindergarten class. That
ancient and broken baptismal font could be repaired and used
as a birdbath in the church garden. Those old parlor drapes could
be made into curtains needed in the nursery. A large box of crayon
stubs could be melted down for altar candles and those old mops
and brooms had handles that could be used for coat racks in the
Sunday school. That pile of outdated hymnals might be wanted
by some other church and those choir robes, replaced years ago,
could be resewn for the annual Christmas pageant. Chipped plates
could go under potted plants and those bent serving spoons would
be just right for the play yard sandbox. The six sad and worn-out
pulpit robes could be refigured into black-out curtains for the
audiovisual area and that heap of bricks from a repaving project
could easily be covered with material from those old pew cushions
and used for bookends and doorstops.
In short, whatever Grace "taketh
away," Molly "giveth back"-
with the possible exception of two broken toilets, seven cans
of dried paint and what may or may not have been the mangled
remains of Forbearance's first boiler. At the end of the day,
Molly had secretly returned almost everything that Grace had
pronounced as trash, while Grace assumed that whatever was missing
from her curbside junk pile had been conveniently scavenged by
perhaps the same eager passersby who had lightened her own household's
load-a notion that Molly disingenuously encouraged. Both women
went home convinced they had accomplished their separate goals.
The only person not convinced was Rev. Hustisford, who kept discovering
things-stuff he was sure he had seen heaped at the curb-in odd
nooks and crannies of Forbearance's rooms. What he thought was
finally gone was inexplicably still there, now in new places
and different piles-a mysterious development that could have
been avoided altogether by someone who fully understood that
a clean sweep cannot be achieved by the pairing of two women
from opposing schools of domestic management. Grace and Molly,
however, had achieved one thing-a nearly perfect recycling standoff
of mutual illusory progress satisfying to both and offensive
to neither. The clean sweep would have to wait.
Charlotte Johnstone is a member of Immanuel Presbyterian Church
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She (and the cast of Forbearance Presbyterian
Church) welcome comments. Write to her at Horizons, 100
Witherspoon St., Louisville, KY 40202-1396 or email wjohns4949@aol.com.
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