This dust multiplies like bunnies

Though I appreciate a vacuumed carpet, sparkling windows and bathtub caulking that doesn’t grow its own food, I must admit I have never done much about these things but stand in the back row and applaud a job well done.

When I was married, I pretty much took care of the yard and garden, and my wife maintained the house. Oh, occasionally, she’d sneak out to prune an apple tree or plant a petunia, but I was never tempted to sneak in to scrub the toilets or change the sheets on the bed. Once, I attempted to help her with what she called “spring housekeeping” but there didn’t seem to be much future in it for me, and tired of listening to my complaining she sent me outside again.

Single again these past five years, I have become painfully aware of myriad domestic duties I didn’t even know existed – things like cleaning bacon grease from the stovetop and putting Drano in the sinks. Especially, though, I find that I need to engage in an odd, ongoing ritual called dusting. Evidently, when my wife was still living, dust was not the nemesis it is today, as I don’t remember her ever complaining much about it, and I never saw more than a speck or two up close. I do, however, remember her performing an odd dance each Saturday morning, during which she put a blue kerchief on her head and charged about the house waving a rag and a can of Pledge. My grown children tell me now she was dusting.

Perhaps it is because I live in the country; perhaps it is because I now heat my home exclusively with wood; perhaps it is because the sandman sneaks into my house at night and shakes out his vacuum cleaner bag. Whatever the reason, after a week without a dust rag and a can of Pledge, I could plant potatoes on my coffee table, raise earthworms on the windowsills. I go about my dusting duties blindly, emulating a vague remembrance. Dusting seems like such a simple thing, I am embarrassed to ask if I am doing it right. Perhaps, if I were, the dust would not return. Perhaps the blue kerchief had something to do with it.

I have noticed that dust is always the same consistency. You’d think country dust would be different than city dust. At least, I would think that. Another funny thing about dust is that it is attracted to sunbeams coming through the window. It seems to me that dusting would be a lot more effective if homes had more windows. With more windows, all you’d have to do is suck the concentrated dust out of the sunbeams before it had a chance to land.

When I was a child, I remember my mother talking about something she called dust bunnies. She chased them away with a feather duster, and though I never did really see a dust bunny, I had them imagined as small, wispy, gray creatures that frightened easily and were especially terrified of feather dusters. Come to think of it, Mom also had a blue kerchief.

Well, I have dust rabbits in this house – hares, actually. Dust hares. They are big and dark, and they could eat a feather duster in one chomp. When I go after them, they merely hop insolently aside. Unlike my mother and my wife, I have never actually gotten rid of dust hares. All I do is chase them around a little.

Yes, I think I must get a blue kerchief.

I hope none of my friends stop by while I’m dusting.