Through Company Eyes

I don’t know whether to feel virtuous because we’re so busy or embarrassed because we let a good resource lie fallow. Diving into the pool in the back yard would be lovely… if we had time, yet it feels like a guilt-inducing indulgence. We swim so rarely, the pool would be better turned into a garden.  Ah, but when company comes, it is really cool to jump in the pool.

Today, when I was preparing to receive company who might make use of the deliciously cool retreat on such a hot July day, I got down and cleaned around the edges – a task which the pool man skips week after week. You can’t really see, as you stand outside of the pool, what the spiders are up to just under the rim of the slate deck that overhangs the tile edging all around. Smart bugs have found the best encampment! Mosquitoes and unsuspecting bees dip in for a wee sip and many of them become ensnared by the mesh of fine webbing just above the water line. LOTS of spider lunches are caught and are waiting to be devoured.

On all fours, I went around the entire perimeter of the pool deck and my rag found panicked spiders scurrying away, dead bees wrapped in so many strands of gossamer filament that they looked more like lavender blossoms than insects – legs and angular body parts softened by layers and layers of spun silk. How do spiders DO that? 

I worry about black widows. Once, a few years ago, when I actually went IN the pool I found one in the filter basket area – just under the warmed-by-the-sun- slate over-hang, but again, above the water line. Maybe if we jumped IN more often the spiders would be discouraged by the splashing. I wouldn’t want any of our two-legged friends to encounter any eight-legged friends while trying to relax in our pool, so I put on my “company eyes” and checked it out.

Seeing things from another’s perspective is a skill worth honing. It certainly was pro-survival for me to hone it. My dad used to have me hold a flash light while he tinkered with his car in the driveway at night. Invariably my six-year old arms would tire and my six-year old mind would wander and the steady stream of light would likewise wander from the part dad needed illuminated in order to fix it. He would yell and grab my hand to steady the beam. That was the beginning of a beautiful marriage between me and inanimate-object-relations awareness.  

I became hyper-conscious of how objects relate to one another in the world and I can track site-lines between people and objects or people and other people and do my best to make sure that nothing I do impedes a person’s view of an object or of a person she is trying to look at. I know when I’m between two folks who can’t see one another because my head is in the way. I move to accommodate their easier viewing of one another. 

Before a visit from our granddaughter, I preview the house at her level, crawling around on all fours to see what this brilliant two year old will see as she cruises through our home. Accordingly, I pick up the lint and dead flies from the corners and make sure all the safety plugs are in the electrical sockets. 

When I’m teaching, if I write anything on a chalk board or white board, I move out of the way to make sure my audience can see what I’ve written. I’m also overly self-conscious about how my back side appears… whether the back of my hair is presentable or if I have a wedgie - things you might not think about if you only look at your front side in the mirror. Growing up in my family it paid to CMA. (Cover My Derriere.)

In preparing our pool area for company this weekend and next it was important for me to “see the house and garden through company eyes.” I remember my mom cleaning house when company was coming. Maybe it got cleaned at other times too, but blitzing the house to gather up and stow away the accumulated crap on every flat surface before company was coming – sometimes just minutes before they were due to arrive - was the norm.

Putting on Company Eyes is a good thing. I get to really look at what I’ve let slide. Piles of books that want reading, sewing projects hanging on the back of the chair by the sewing machine in hopes the elves will show-up to complete the task, the “IN BOX” on my desk with papers dating from before we moved into this house over 20 years ago… all this stuff can GO, ‘Bye-‘ Bye, Good Riddance!

Is July too late for “Spring Cleaning?” I admire folks who can just dump it all. I admire folks who don’t seem to have the “stuff magnet” surgically implanted in their being the way I do. I admire one of my yoga teachers who claims to have emptied her entire storage unit into the back of a truck, to have driven to the dump and (gulp) to have just backed up to the edge of the abyss and shoved the entire collection of unopened boxes. She said she felt much lighter for the experience. My mind goes, “But but but but… what if those were photographs of your children or your grandparents? What if those boxes had precious artifacts from your earlier life? I never admitted to her how shocking I found her cleansing because I thought surely I would be judged for embodying “attachment” rather than “non-attachment.” 

Ultimately, I guess my greatest fear is of being judged, found lacking and whopped up-side the head because of my shortcomings. Maybe I could learn to be accepted for who I really am… you know… let my inner slob come forward. I’ll work on that one. Meanwhile I aspire to down-size, un-load and get-ready to have fun in the sun. 

Still, I worry about the black-widows, so I’ll keep my company eyes for those times when they’re useful. Maybe I’ll even jump in the pool and treat myself like “company” just because I want to swim! You know… use stuff rather than letting the stuff use me!