My mom was a neat freak.  Or something.  Allow me to explain the “something”: if my room was not cleaned to her standards, she would blow through my room like the Tasmanian Devil, pulling things out of drawers, out of my closet, out from under my bed – anything that she believed was “out of place” was thrown out in to the middle of my room for me to clean – “and really clean this time – I mean it!”

As an adult, I imagine this exercise was some sort of misguided stress that she was unleashing upon each of us instead of beating the living daylights out of us.  I’m pretty sure that the only reason she didn’t try to beat us was because my big brother had stood up to her for any kind of physical punishment she might have deemed necessary.  Ah, but that’s another story for another time.

This story begins when I was about 8 or 9 years old when my forehead fell victim to one such calamitous event.  One summer day I was happily going about my business until I heard the unmistakable call for aforementioned tornado-like room cleaning:

“TINA!!!!!!”   A pause.  Always a pause.  I think all of us paused when we knew this procedure was going to begin.  Did we think we could hide from this?  Did we think our silence would make it go away?  Maybe we just had to brace ourselves for what was to come.

“GET DOWN HERE!!!!” 

Though I don’t remember this part specifically, I imagine I sighed, stopped what I was doing and then cautiously – but quickly – made my way down the stairs to where my bedroom was.

She had already begun the “cleaning”.  My toys and clothes that I’m sure I, at my clever old age, thought I had well hidden under my bed, safe from an unprovoked cleaning drill, were already piled up in the middle of the floor.  I remember I never really knew what I should do during these events. 

If I stood and did nothing, I was accused of being lazy and making her “do all of the work”.  My juvenile mind fought the urge to point out this was no way I would go about doing this work.  If I tried to help I most certainly wasn’t “doing it right”.  So I mostly stayed out of the way, moving things around from one side of my room to the other, to make myself look like I was busy.

Another delightful part of this lesson was the yelling.  The profanities.  The being told I was “disgusting”.  In my youth I did not have a great deal of self-confidence but this was one assertion I never took to heart.  I actually believed I was quite tidy, though I did have a way of stashing things in my closet when I just didn’t feel like dealing with them.  That line of lazy thinking was definitely a mistake in my household.

She made her way to my closet, flung open the unfinished wooden bifold doors and gasped at what she saw.  “SHOES PILED HIGH!!”  She started whipping them over her shoulder behind her.  “CLOTHES ON THE FLOOR!”  Clothes flung over her shoulder. I actually remember suddenly feeling responsible for all of this. 

I could have avoided all of this if I had just put my things away neatly!  Why hadn’t I just put my things away the RIGHT WAY??  Suddenly, and quite sharply, it was as if I had physically felt that strike of responsibility, right to the front of my head!  It took me a few moments to realize that a white patent leather church shoe had actually struck my forehead.  I remained quiet about it – “making things about me” was another no-no in our household and I didn’t cry for fear of being “given something to cry about”.  I remember that it felt hot.  I looked up at myself in my dresser mirror and to my horror found blood spurting from my forehead!

I panicked.  I said – nervously:  “Uhhhh – my head is bleeding!”  She was still chucking things over her shoulder and had not noticed that I had been struck with a hard-heeled shoe.  In a very satisfied manner she sharply replied, “GOOD!”.  By now I had put my hand over the bleeding.  I pulled my hand away again and it was still spurting from my forehead.  I nervously repeated, “Uhhhh … it’s really bleeding bad!”  She angrily whipped around and just as fast as she whipped around her face went white and she grabbed one of my t-shirts and placed it against my forehead and we went upstairs to the bathroom to get a better look.

I could tell she was concerned for me.  I was relieved that the yelling had stopped.  I was also worried about the bleeding but I was thoroughly entertained by this sudden attitude adjustment.

Years later, after we’d moved to Ohio, this cleaning day would happen while I was at school.  I would get home from school, or volleyball practice or a game and find that all of my belongings were on my bed.  I couldn’t go to bed until my room was clean – and really clean this time.

She had told me repeatedly that I obviously didn’t care about my things because I wasn’t taking care of them.  I decided she must be right. I decided I was tired of being yelled at and tired of coming home to all of my things piled high on to my bed.

So I packed up about 90% of my shit in to trash bags and hauled them out to the garbage.

To this day I have no connection to material things. 

I also still believe myself to be quite tidy. 

Though my closet can sometimes contain stashes of items that I just didn’t feel like dealing with at the time.

And I still feel anxious about that.