dirty secret in the wee small

Right now, I should be fast asleep - in beautiful, fall-color engorged extreme northwest Massachusetts.  Taking a writing workshop with Nancy Slonim Aronie.

I am sitting in the computer studio at Squirrel Haven.  I am writing, though. And I am writing about something that Nancy suggests in her wondrous book (the one I'm supposed to having a living experience of over this glorious mid-autumn weekend), Writing from the Heart - - write about a secret.

Although I adore Nancy's book - the first book I started marking certain passages with clear tape tabs, after turning down countless page corners, folding entire pages in half, underlining special bits in glaring yellow highlighter - although I adore Nancy's book, have never used a suggestion.  This one, in particular, caught my attention & made me want to forget I'd ever read it.  Write about a secret.  

Yeah.  

There are a lot of secrets that came to mind, ones that would make for great dramatic revelations, but the one that has not let me alone since the very wee small hours of this morning is also my dirtiest.

I don't vacuum.

Ever.

And we have 12 cats. 

This time, last year, we had 13.

I didn't vacuum then, either.

It is not that I am lazy.  A big immense massive block keeps me from vacuuming.  It is a place I do not let myself go.  It is a "don't go there" feeling in my back, in the section right under my shoulder blades.  And it has been forever.

When the cats entered our lives, which wasn't planned, a very strong thought occurred to me ~ "This is the Universe making sure that you HAVE to vacuum the way you did when your mother expected it to be done on at least a relatively frequent basis.  Now, you HAVE to."  

Except, I didn't.

I haven't touched a vacuum in a couple years.  Maybe longer.

Everything about our house is a block.  Everything in my head around the house is blocked.  There isn't a single room in this house where I feel actually welcome, so none of them look welcoming.  

It could be related to the fact that I grew up in houses - two on Alden Road, one on Cherry Lane, one on Woodland Road - where I never felt welcome.  Because I wasn't.  Needed, yes.  Welcome - never.  It could be related to that.

Or totally not.

My reality is that when friends paid a surprise visit around this time a year ago, the first words out of my mouth when I saw them talking to John on our front lawn, here on Pheasant Run not over a thousand miles away on N. Vail Drive, wasn't, "What a glorious surprise!  How wonderful to see you!!"  No, it was, "You didn't let them into the house, did you??"  

He hadn't.

And they assumed it was because the house was a wreck.  It wasn't.  It was because our house stinks to high heaven of cats.  

The Universe might have given them to us as a spur to turn me into a reasonable house cleaner, but that worked about as well as my Mom giving my sister family treasures in the expectation that it would give her the incentive to take care of something. 

The Universe had as little success with me as Mom did with Mim.

There was an outcome to the phone call a week later from Candy, sharing her deep concern & offer to help make a difference.  Now, a year later, the house IS a wreck. 

And the vacuuming remains undone.

John cleans off the carpets.  He does a really deep clean, sort of combing the carpet, with a cat brush.

In all my years, this morning is the first time ever that I can write think about my vacuuming block & realize there is a way around it.  Just vacuum.  Just do it once a day.  At least in the living room.  It will be great exercise.  The how when wherefores of the block don't matter.  The only thing I know for absolute sure is that if I figured out the underlying reasons in my head, they would be wrong.  Blocks don't make sense.  They aren't about making sense.  They are about blocking.  

And this one has been a doozie.  A massively successful doozie.  

It is very easy to rewrite that short far-from-simple sentence.  To  "I do vacuum."  

Open my heart & energies.  See what is right in front of me to do.  Literally under my feet. 


Make it so.