After avoiding it for two years completely, a week and a half ago, Covid hit our house.
I felt positive it would run through all of us as I gazed at the two pink lines of my daughter’s at-home test.
I couldn’t imagine a way around that in our shoebox worth of living space, and my mind ran wild with ways to curb it;
But, by a miraculous twist, my 13 year old, Tessa, was the only one who ever tested positive for it.
Once her quarantine period was over, and she was able to return to school, I set out the first day she was back to deep clean and disinfect her room.
My face was so bright, and full of hope as I placed my hand on the door handle.
I pity that version of me, so naive.
So precious, I was.
We were past it! “This was the end game,” I thought.
I picture stroking my own head as I wear a shock blanket now.
She had done well with staying isolated in there, so I knew I’d need to be thorough with the clean, but was unaware of how IN I would need to be.
Knowing how she lives on just average days, I was already scared of what exactly I’d find after a full-blown quarantine, but I armed myself with hot water, Lysol, bleach, a mask, and a container of Clorox wipes.
In my memory now, that moment in time will remain as the moment that separates the “before” and the “after.”
“The Moment it All Went Down.”
The last moment of my innocence.
The last moment I was myself.
The things I discovered when I went in made those solvents in my hands look like play things.
Like I’d showed up to clean with items I’d just unwrapped inside of an LOL Egg.
Those solutions kill 99.9% of germs?
Friends, unbeknownst to me as I entered, I had just turned the handle to the actual doorway of that last .1.
A teenager’s room requires a Hasmat suit, not just a cute little bottle of bleach spray.
I know this now.
I have grown.
My trauma has stretched me.
I’ve seen things that I can’t unsee, no matter how vigorously I rinse my eyes out.
I went about the usual fare at first, slight crazy looking smile, telling myself, “This is fine, see?”
Sweeping, clutter clean up, and removal of the standard 15 cups,
all while reciting The Rosary.
Well, OK…My version of it.
I’m not Catholic, or anything.
I just thought praying God’s hand over the spirits lurking in that room really couldn’t hurt things.
Next, I decided to deep clean even underneath her bed,
so I hoisted the whole thing up like it was a trap door, and stood it on its end.
I just stood there afterwards while the green vapor from the earth lulled me with its glow.
That standing of the bed on end was like I’d opened an ancient sarcophagus.
My pupils swirled, and I heard the voices of all my past ancestors calling me from somewhere deep within the dust.
Bits of wrappers, SEVERAL dehydrated peas, FIVE complete pieces of my tupperware with LIDS INCLUDED, (I don’t think I even have five complete pieces in the actual cabinet)
blankets, towels, and washcloths, a skateboard I HAVE NEVER SEEN,
shoes 4 sizes too small…
A person could literally survive for days off of just the items I found in those four square feet.
There were clothes, food, and items of warmth.
I bet if I’d looked closer, there was a campfire and a can of beans.
What more could you even need?
(besides a current Tetanus shot)
You know that scene in The Mummy when the spirits are unleashed from the earth, and the face of the Mummy forms as it rises from the dust?
Well that dust face must have been a cousin to the one that has apparently been living with us.
A teen cousin that rolled his eyes at me, and told me how “cringe” I was.
But, Good news! I found every missing fork and spoon.
I half expected to find some of the missing Dead Sea Scrolls, too.
I realized that when it comes to a teenager’s room, they call it “deep cleaning,” not because the clean itself will be thorough, but because you will literally be wading in that clean almost up to your waist.
It can overtake you.
How TLC had not shown up to film a docu-series on that wasteland was far beyond me.
I messaged my friends to let them know that if they’d been missing anything at all for the last several years to hit me up, because the chances were good that I had found it in Tessa’s room, covered in something previously sticky, that had now formed some type of crust.
I called my youngest, Paige, to come in and help me clean in one area that I couldn’t reach,
and she gagged and carried on, “Why does it smell so BAD?!”
Honey,
Welcome to the bedroom of a teen.
Here is a freshly-printed contract.
Sign here and here as a promise you will never do this again to me.
Exiting that room two hours later,
I was surprised Covid was ALL that Tessa had caught.
She’d been practically sleeping right on top of Typhoid, Malaria, and Dengue Fever from the look of it.
Her immune system should be scientifically studied.
Maybe she’s a superhero, and this is the beginning of her story.
I realized she must not have been listening when I’d had The Cleaning Talk with her sister years before:
CHLOE: “But WHY do we always have to clean up? Cleaning is BORING! You ALWAYS make us clean up!”
ME: “Because it is my job as a mom to teach you how to be a decent adult one day.
If I don’t teach you to clean now, then one day you’ll look up and realize,
‘Hey! I’m a forty year old woman with one giant dreadlock for hair, and I’ve been sleeping on a pile of rotted pumpkins with flattened dead cats all around me for a decade.’
You don’t want a rotted pumpkin bed, do you?
And you don’t want cats to die, do you?
No?
That’s what I thought. Then best get to cleaning.”
– Scared Straight – Housework Edition
That talk must have worked.
Chloe is immaculately clean now.
Perfectly organized room that always smells good, she does her own laundry, she dusts things,
But Tessa? Tessa must have missed that talk.
It’s hard to hear when you are buried, after all.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
