As a child I really did not look forward to having visitors descend on our family home during the December holidays. Don’t get me wrong, while I looked forward to the once-a-year chicken from our beige electric frying pain, all the cleaning leading up to the day was enough to put me off all festivities.
My grandparents did not spare the rod, and while I hated all the housework, I mopped, mowed, weeded and pruned with the fervency of a GNU minister from a small party. There were days when there was so much cleaning I would have to trek uphill to the landfill and empty the municipal bin a couple of times during the week. To my grandparents’ credit, the house was never actually dirty, if anything, it was spotless most of the time. It was just when we had visitors that the Brasso metal polish came out and the ornaments had to be shined, the gutters were repainted and a double portion of red Sunbeam polish was layered on the concrete windowsills.
My grandfather took great pride in the upkeep of his home and garden, the grass was tended enough to make any greenskeeper blush with envy. His shoes also matched his lawn. Other than making him tea and sprinting to the general dealer to get his Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes, I was tasked with keeping his shoes clean. I would polish those Crockett and Jones two-tone brogues every evening under his watchful eye. To this day I can’t stand having or seeing someone with dirty shoes, it just doesn’t feel right.
My grandmother also ran a tight ship. The mop was a luxury, my sisters and aunts had to scrub the front stoep by hand on makeshift knee pads every Saturday morning. The kitchen had to be clean, especially as this was the first place you saw when you entered the home, and this of course was where we slept. No dish had real estate on the kitchen counter for more than a few minutes.