Spring Cleaning

No matter what season it might seem to be that is looking in at us through our windows today, the calendar informs us that we are deep into spring and are therefore duty-bound to perform that annual task we so festively call Spring Cleaning.

This fervent cleansing of our houses is a tradition with a long history that reaches all the way back to about 1300 BCE when God, aka Yahweh, visited the ten plagues on Egypt, which represented a major political problem and a reversal of fortune for a Pharaoh whose familiar name might have been Betty. There were also several religious ramifications that went along with the Creator getting that miffed.

The Pharaoh’s spin doctors, economists, attorneys, pollsters and a mysterious concubine named Easif, advised him that his political career could be salvaged by merely freeing the slaves and, if he promised to boycott Starbucks and get his cardamom Kahwa latte from local shops in his own neighborhood, God would leave him alone–at least for a while.

His press secretary, Sarraat, assured the tablet press of the time that there would be no significant impact on an economy that would now have to pay its workers a livable minimum wage. She also promised that the resulting tax cuts to the Pharaoh and his closest friends would create a surplus of sheep’s milk that would trickle down to benefit the poorest of the poor.

This made no sense to the press corps which had yet to discover that Sarraat was a lying idiot, or to the assembled masses, the latter of which for the most part didn’t care much for sheep’s milk and made the wise decision to flee Egypt to Canaan, aka the Promised Land–a place they’d only heard about but hoped would not be in Utah.

This hasty retreat by the Israelites was so hasty that their Exodus (hence, the book) left no time for the bread to leaven which, in retrospect, was the least of their problems. The whole story is incredibly complex but suffice it to say that it involves Moses and the recap of his somewhat incredulous backstory, the parting of the Red Sea, thunder and lighting, a booming voice from the sky, the deliverance of two stone tablets commanding how people should live, and thousands of people wandering the barren wilderness for forty days with nothing to eat but matzoh crackers and horseradish–a diet rich in symbolism but short on taste, let alone nutrition

And that’s just the movie version.

All religious miracles (as opposed to the secular ones) demand commemoration and this one, named Passover, aka Pesach, requires that each spring Jews celebrate the holiday by cleaning our homes of anything containing leavened foodstuffs, chametz, which includes beer and Oreo cookies–a combination of flavors that is surprisingly tasty if you happen to be in college. For reasons that only the ancient mystics know, the most pious of us perform this task by candlelight, possibly in the nude.

And for this we are rewarded with a celebration of seven days of eating matzoh crackers and horseradish after a night of symbolic gaiety that requires the asking of four questions, the drinking of four hideously bad glasses of cloyingly sweet wine, and the ritual hiding of the matzoh that everybody hopes nobody will find lest we should have to eat more of what really does taste like toasted cardboard.

So what does this all have to do with Spring Cleaning? Not as much as I had hoped for, actually.

It does, however, deliver us to the threshold of a story about a friend of mine who recently moved to Italy. Rome, to be specific. The preparation for his move defined the X-Games of Spring Cleaning and it was what I had hoped would be the inspiration for my own task this year. Alas, it wasn’t; I failed.

MY FRIEND IS A MUSICIAN WHO had lived in the same house in Los Angeles for forty years and his move entailed getting rid of pretty much everything he and his wife had accumulated during their shared lifetime–and before. Furniture, artwork, photographs, appliances, cookware and dishes, flatware and stemware, tools and yard implements, books and recordings, holiday decorations, memorabilia, trinkets and knickknacks, linens, clothing, vehicles. I know I must be missing something.

They moved to their new life with a couple of suitcases, a couple of carry-ons, his upright bass, and maybe a couple of small crates of assorted stuff.

Quite frankly, I don’t know how they did it, and I’ve spent several hours over the past few months thinking about it and wondering if I could. What I’ve discovered is that without the motivation of an actual move to Italy (or France; I’m not that picky) I probably couldn’t discard the physical mementos of my life.

Geri and I are not hoarders by any stretch of the imagination, although I don’t know why she insists on keeping our children’s schoolwork, all of which is neatly filed in thick folders that have not been opened in more than fifteen years. I’ve tried giving this stuff to the kids. They don’t want it either.

Nor do they want either of the two sets of illustrated encyclopedias we bought when door-to-door salesmen convinced us that the Internet was a passing fancy.

And yet I must admit that we have three storage lockers for the safe-keeping of stuff we don’t need to keep.

Granted, two of them are filled mostly with stuff from our now-closed restaurants that nobody wants to buy, but the third one has such cherished valuables, to name one, as a surfboard that seems to have no discernible history or connection to our family. We are not surfers. There are also countless unmarked boxes that, had we moved to Italy twenty-five years ago rather than to Montana, would not have made the cut.

Without the proper motivation, I will never be successful in ridding my life of the useless accoutrement that decorates my life.

Many years ago I began a year-long project that required my disposing of one modest box of crap each week. The garbage bin, a recycling bin or a local thrift shop were the intended disposal targets. I was successful in my quest, but at the end of the year I had more crap than I had started with. How is that possible? The mystery of it is right up there with the ontological proof of the existence of God, aka Yahweh.

There are, if not rules, at least guidelines for the disposing of stuff. They are arbitrary, arguable and completely personal. I cannot bring myself to throw out a book, for instance. I have several boxes of framed photographs and no suitable wall space to hang them. I would do well to file the pictures and sell the frames at a garage sale for ten cents each. I’m too lazy to do that as I am not motivated by the possibility of earning the $6 the sale of those picture frames might net.

I like my collection of metal roosters. My vinyl LPs are probably worth a lot of money, but they are at the very back of the garage-size storage locker. We’re currently using our appliances, although somewhere there are at least three boxes of kitchen stuff we put aside for the cabin-in-the-mountains we’ll never have. A lot of our furniture has been marred by the cats who’ve wandered through our lives. I do not know why there are six pairs of skis spanning the overhead beams in my office.

But I do keep trying to get rid of stuff, if only to relieve my children of this arduous task after I die, although that isn’t too much of an incentive.

My desktop is a churning mass of papers and reprints and books and magazines. Notes I’ve not seen in weeks suddenly work their way to the top, only to attract my momentary attention before retaking their rightful place back at the bottom of the stack. In this mix is a magazine I bought at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to read during a flight home. It is called “Maxi Cuisine” and it cost 2€. It is in French, a language I neither speak nor read.

I enjoyed the magazine, looking at the pictures of things I’d like to eat and trying to decipher the words and their meanings. The crossword puzzle was particularly perplexing.

Anyway, I can’t bring myself to relegating “Maxi Cuisine” to the recycling bin. I look at it from time to time and wonder how just how good the Tournedos de canard au chou must be. Perhaps you can tell me.

Tournedos de canard au chou

1 rôti de canard (600 g)
1/2 chou rouge
1 oignon
5 petits oignons
3 c. à soupe d’herbes de Provence
40 g de beurre
15 cl de vin blanc
1 c. à café de fond de volaille
1 c. à soupe de vinaigre
sel
poivre 5 baies

Do something French-like with all of the above. Serve immediately.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska