Company’s coming
I swash a brush twice around the toilet, close the shower curtain to hide the bathtub ring and shine the bathroom faucets until they hurt the eye. A clean hand towel completes the deception.
I stuff dishes into the dishwasher; exceptionally gross pots and pans go under the sink. The front edges of the refrigerator shelves are washed, and I swab random spots on the kitchen floor.
Zipping through the house, I attempt the ancient balancing process known as fling shoey—tossing more shoes into the closet than remain in the middle of the floor.
I bolt all bedroom and office doors shut. Plus those of extra bathrooms.
Thus, I complete the whited-sepulchre process known as cleaning for company.
The funny part is that I’m playing hypocrite because students are coming over.
Judging by my children’s dormitory rooms when they were in college, I need not have compromised my integrity. Squalor comprised their natural habitat.
Yet I cannot stop. If company is coming, I have to conduct the drill (or a three-minute emergency version accomplished while my husband stalls the surprise visitors on the front porch).
Why do I stress so?
When I was a preschooler, having company was a treat. My siblings and I welcomed visiting children as reinforcements in the ongoing War Against Grown-ups. Usually, our combined forces outnumbered the adults, and we reversed Mom’s earlier clean-up process with relentless efficiency. Once my brother, our best friends and I mixed a truly superior batch of mud in our red wagon and threw big balls of gunk at our church’s windows.
My brother and I didn’t have company for awhile.
Since my father was a pastor, our family hosted evangelists and missionaries. Sometimes my mother received little advance warning, and watching her perfect the God-help-us-they’rehere drill, I learned her technique. Some guests initially held odd notions about peace and quiet while staying in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house with five kids, but they learned fast.
We children always celebrated when we heard our favorite evangelist, Brother Alleman, soon would arrive. My sister and I had to sleep on the floor because my parents gave him their bedroom, and they took ours, but Brother Alleman’s big smile, his faith-filled stories, and the fact he bought us all candy bars won our hearts.
Not long after one of his visits, my parents took in relatives from the deep South who were down on their luck, upping the population of our house to thirteen: four adults and nine children. They stayed several months, then abruptly left. To this day, I wonder if their departure was hastened by my father’s mentioning that Brother Alleman had slept in the very bed they occupied.
Our favorite guest happened to be Africanamerican.
Though I enjoyed Brother Alleman and many others, I wished my parents weren’t quite so hospitable, especially as I entered my teens. Because my room, unlike my brothers’, did not resemble a buffalo wallow, company often took it over. Precious bathroom time was rationed.
And one morning, slipping in the back door from an overnight campout, I encountered a teen boy I’d never seen before in my life, asleep on our sofa.
After I recovered, I helped my mother fix breakfast for him and his 20-plus fellow church members from a distant town, strewn in various nooks and crannies throughout our house. They’d mistakenly thought our church held services on Friday nights.
At least, that situation lasted only one night. One involving a female ex-gang member did not. She shared my room for some months, and we grew to be good friends. She gave me excellent pointers on self-defense and demonstrated how to throw a knife with reasonable accuracy in less than a second.
When I left home, I promised myself I would live a normal life.
Normal? I married a country doctor with a solo medical practice. With my cohost often failing to show and only my children to help(?), I invited few guests. Gradually I gave up on the idea.
Recently, though, with my husband’s slower-paced job, I decided to dust off my having-company drill. We’ve begun to rediscover the fun of hospitality.
Mudballs and gang members aside, having company has become a treat again.
Almost as good as Brother Alleman’s candy bars.