Secret: I am incapable of cleaning the house without the assistance of boy bands, ranging from One Direction to The Grateful Dead.
Not so secret: there are days when cleaning the house is exactly the soul-balm we need, and days when cleaning the house would be nearly a sin.
My favorite boy bands (sorry, Harry and Jerry) are feline, and they would unanimously agree that our time is best spent on mirth and music rather than mopping.
I’m talking about Suite FIV, that collective of creatures born for bliss. If you tell Lester you have chores to do, he’ll tell you you’re right, and they involve laying upon the floor and gazing at the ceiling with one largish white-and-black cat draped over your belly.
I’m talking about the Lobby, that wide wading pool of peace. If you attempt to hustle past Hobo, apologizing like the White Rabbit for your haste on the way to Important Tasks, he’ll squint sweetly enough to rearrange your priority list. And when you abandon the tyranny of the urgent for the tenderness of the ancient, he’ll whisper, in his wheezy-wonderful old man purr, “that’s what makes you beautiful.”
I’m talking about Suite C, the continent of the colossal, where titans like Elijah will take matters very much into their own hands if you dare to get task-oriented rather than smoosh-oriented. Never underestimate the power of one excessively enormous individual: this bouncing ball of a boy is eerily good at ferreting out sadness and sitting upon it until it pops into comforted confetti. So even if your frenzy of busyness is an honest attempt to break out of a box of rain (anyone else scrub floors as a self-soothing strategy?), he’ll remind you that you’re better off sitting down, choosing the better part of being and loving and resting in a gaze that calls you good.
You are good, you know.
The boys in the bands are telling the truth, if only we’ll slow down long enough to listen.
Yes, we have officially reached the point in the pandemic where I am sharing asinine excellence of this variety. Forgive me, Jerry, for I have juxtaposed you with 1D, and I’m not sorry:
This blog contains the truth that is “Doesn’t matter how much work you have to do, nothing is more important than paying attention to the cats.” To paraphrase that old saying about regrets at the end of life – no one will regret that the housework was unfinished, but they will regret that they did not spend more time with cats!