Spring Cleaning In Mayberry

Many women in my town still do a big spring cleaning. 

You drive past their old two or three-story homes and spy them standing in their yards in their aqua dusters with their hair wrapped in scarves. They beat rugs, hang wet laundry, sweep sidewalks and repaint the porch furniture. You can drive by my house and see me adding to the local color, also, for I like to do my share in keeping the old ways alive.

Lately I'm carrying boxes from my old office in our basement all the way up to the second floor where I spend my days now in my two new, Naomi-less rooms. While watching The Andy Griffith Show or The Dick Van Dyke Show, I sit on the floor picking through those boxes, sorting through junk and old memories.

And too, I've spent hours tearing pages from decorating magazines, keeping only the pictures of cozy rooms I love. Then I slip those into plastic sleeves, place them in three-ring binders then out on my porch for the hours I loll around out there.

I love Spring cleaning after a long winter. The air holds so much promise of good times and weather for the year's remainder. The promise is so thick, in fact, that it carries me along until the job is finished.

I like the old ways, well, many of them, Spring Cleaning being one. Where's the burden in caring for what God has given me? I mean, who comes up with this stuff?--



So, like, what? It's the sign of a well-spent life to live in a dirty house?

I think not.

There is a balance to life. If only we would all find it.

Some people say the Good Old Days are gone. Well, it's still the Good Old Days around my house. No one can take them away from me--unless I give them away.



***