"How do you live like this?" She shook her head and crossed her arms at me, mouth open in disbelief. "It's Julie! I always clean up after myself, but she never cleans." She shook her head and set to work, ripping paper towels and quickly wiping and bleaching the stovetop, which had months of dried sauces, mixings and juices spilled onto it, as well as various onion choppings and garlic mincing that had been accidentally tossed from the wok during our dinnertime projects.
Mom had just arrived from the West Coast. After buying us groceries and putting them away, she set to work on making our kitchen as presentable as possible before the big party. In t minus 26 hours people would begin showing up for my 21st birthday party, an event as important to me as it was to her.
And so she spent most of that evening using her newly bought paper towels and kitchen garbage bags to wipe our bathroom and kitchen of its collected grime, because as everyone knows, when you go to a party, restaurant or anywhere dirty, it inspires a lack of consideration, and so you think, oh what the heck, I can splash water on the sink accidentally, I can drag my dirty shoes on the floor -- it doesn't make any difference to this filthy home.
My mother, good sweet woman that she is, didn't even stop at cleaning. No, she went further, the next day purchasing disposable cutlery and other party goods such as napkins and paper plates and plastic cups, aluminum pans for the lasagna she had planned to bake, and toilet tissue she knew we'd need for the various 40-odd friends of mine planning to show.
Pretty soon, I don't know how, it was all done. The house was sparkling, the antipasti was ready, and the lasagna was in the oven. My friends started to arrive in line, bearing tidings of course, and we celebrated my ability to legally drink alcohol by cracking a few tall boys.
The party was a great success, at least the parts I remember. And since the house wasn't all that messy the next morning, likely due to the respect people had for it when they saw how clean it was, we only went through a roll and a half of paper towels. Reminder to self: make sure to invite Mom to all birthday parties for the rest of my life.
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