I’ll never be the housekeeper my mother was. Every spring she literally tore the house apart. She scrubbed and cleaned and washed everything in sight. By the end of March the entire house smelled as fresh, clean, and crisp as spring itself.

She scrubbed the windows, sent all the drapes to the cleaners, waxed and polished every imaginable surface. Naturally, my brother and I got dragged, kicking and yelling, into this madness. My dad seemed to escape the terror, although I don’t know how. My mother was on a mission and she was taking POWs. If anyone took the old adage “Cleanliness is next to godliness” seriously, it was my mother.

I suspect I was a sorry disappointment to her in that area and yet every spring I feel this sudden urge to clean and organize. I just may have more of my mother in me than I realize. But then, don’t we all?