Crumbs

I got a text message from my German teacher this morning. He was in the hospital last night, so I don’t have class today or tomorrow. This means I have a few more unstructured hours in my day, not that I need them. But perhaps it’s true what Gertrude Stein said: to be a genius you need a lot of time to do nothing - to wait for the great ideas to come. I admire the sentiment greatly, looking as I do for excuses to be idle and possessing delusions of grandeur. I should mention that Gertrude Stein came from money and had servants. Perhaps this is genius?

Still, I wonder what would it be like if I were idle the whole day long; if I didn’t tidy the kitchen or fold the laundry. I was brought up to believe that you must clean and clear as you go, but having since found that sparkling surfaces and ordered shelves often indicate a hidden chaos, I have my doubts.

I remember watching my mother scrub the floors in the middle of the night. I decided to be naughty and ate a muffin, purposefully dropping crumbs on the floor. My mother did not see me - only the crumbs - and she followed, scrubbing as she went, wiping the floor in circles, without beginning and without end.

You could have had a picnic on our floor. You could have, but there was nothing to eat. There were only ordered cupboards; a family trying to fight the chaos within. There were sparkling surfaces and people going in circles, not seeing each other.

Looking for crumbs…..