Housekeeping 101

     I don’t take criticism well — especially if it is directed toward me or my immediate family and more especially if I consider it unfair.  The perfect example is what ‘the relatives’ persist on saying about my grandmother, Helen Richardson Espy, and her housekeeping skills.
     Helen was raised in East Oakland, California, in a genteel household by a mother whose roots were in the deep south.  She was taught to arrange flowers, to cook fancy desserts, to play several musical instruments and to direct the servants.  Little of that prepared her for 52 years of married life in Oysterville where, in the days before electricity, she raised seven children and took care of a ten-room house without household help. 
     Most of my cousins and their children and grandchildren were born too  late to know their “Aunt Helen.”  But they have heard and continue to repeat stories told about her by their own mothers and grandmothers.  One story, told with a sort of knowing smirk, is that Helen cleaned house with a dustcloth wrapped around her index finger.  The implication is that she was a very poor housekeeper, indeed.
     I bite my tongue for I know that whatever I say will be misconstrued.  But each time I dust these same rooms my grandmother cared for, and polish the same furniture she nurtured during her years in the house, I wish that my cousins could walk in her moccasins, so to speak.  Or even in mine.  For I, too, wrap the dust cloth around my index finger.  It’s the only way I can get to a lot of the spots that need my attention.  So does that make my grandmother and me bad housekeepers or good ones?   Truth to tell, I don’t think either of us put a high priority on housework, but wrapping the dustcloth around a finger is not the accurate indicator of that failing, no matter what the relatives say.