Cleaning Archives - A Wildwood Story

Dear Candace,

Every spring when the Missouri hills dramatically debut with dressings of green, it feels like I’m seeing it again for the first time. The children are used to my exclamations of “Do you SEE this!? Do you SEE how much green there is now?!” when we are driving. It’s no exaggeration to say we live among the rocks and rills, hills and valleys that make this state beautiful. Two turns from my house and we’re among it all; a feast for the senses!

There is a church not far from us that I call “the church in the dell.” It is literally nestled in a valley with hills expanding upwards around it. It’s so green and picturesque right now that you have to wonder if it sprang from a fairy-tale.

I opened up the windows wider this week (for like 5 minutes when it wasn’t raining) to let in some of this gorgeously perfumed air, and very quickly everything was coated in a yellow pollen. Ah, yes. The other part of spring. So much dusting to do, so little time.

Today I worked with the boys cleaning and organizing in their bedroom. How to put this experience. Let’s just say I told them they would receive a daily parental inspection henceforth. I may have also thrown out phrases like “army beds” and “white glove dusting” and “do not forsake your mother’s teaching.” The boys swept, dusted, mopped, and thoroughly cleaned nearly everything. We still have some drawers to go through, but I already feel more emotionally stable. Three bags of trash are now gone, plus one box marked for Goodwill. Caleb’s snake, Mango, is doing quite well in his aquarium and Drew’s potted plants are thriving. There is hope in the world!

Let there be light in the darkness.

Love and green.

Rachel

Letter 15

Letter 17

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White. The color of my life. Irish white is the color of my skin, about which I have been teased all my life. Freckled white Irish girls, unite! If the world looks hard enough, they’ll be able to see us. We just need to make more noise.

My kitchen cabinets are white, my bed, sheets, and duvet are white. There are white walls in my home, white furniture, white towels (MISTAKE), white dishes. It’s a love affair. Once, I hosted an outdoor Midsummer’s Eve dinner party and dressed the entire family in white. Also a mistake because hello, toddlers.

I wanted a white kitchen sink in this house so bad that I cried at the thought of cold, heartless stainless steel. I had a previous experience with a cheap white sink that was a horror to clean, but stubbornly insisted that white sinks and I were bound together; I could have no other.

We upped our sink game with a new-to-us-via-Craigslist white Kohler sink when remodeling this house. After it was first installed, it was perfect. One week and 40 million dishes later plus all the hard abuse that we give our kitchen (me to children: “why are you washing rocks in my sink?”), its gleam was a little off. I, however, was undaunted. I knew the secret to restoring a white sink, and fast-forward a couple years later, continue to follow the same magic routine. I will now bless you with this knowledge, so you may go forth and let your white sink shine brightly to all the world. Let it not be hidden.