There was no one with a cleaner  house than my grandmother.  There was no one who hated spring cleaning more than my grandmother.  When she went about this annual necessity she scrubbed everything from the floors to the ceilings.  Every object in every room either got whacked with a beater, worked over on a scrub board, washed down with a large cleaning rag or polished to a shine with a paste wax.  Anyone with a lick of sense in  his/her head stayed clear of the house and grandma until she found him/her and put same to work.  She  had six kids and by the time they were teenagers, if they survived, they knew how to hook a starched lace panel on a frame, beat a rug into submission and polish a window until it became invisible.  They were jittery all through the month of March and well into April, knowing the DAY was coming when she would rise extra early and declare, “Today we start spring cleaning.”

When it finally happened they were gloriously happy that it was a school day which meant she could only corral them when they arrived home and they would escape her most of the day.  She arose to the usual discomfort of arthritis, ate her daily oatmeal and drank a very strong cup of coffee.  Around her head she tied a cloth to protect her hair from all the dust she intended to stir up. On her feet went her usual mid-heel walking shoes, short on style but long on comfort.  She put on a cotton house dress and apron and gathered up a water bucket, brushes, cleaning rags and homemade soap, not pretty stuff but it did the job.

The first room she tackled was her “music room” wherein stood her prized player piano, so new there were still two payments left to make on it.  She had nagged Grandpa for months to buy it for her.  Little else occupied the smallish room except  a lamp or two, an arm chair and the piano bench.  Starting with the ceiling she brought in a step ladder and quickly washed off the dust that accumulated over the winter months.  That accomplished she moved to the single window and removed three layers which screened out any sunlight that might have tried to enter.   There were a pull-down shade, lace panels and side drapes which had to be either laundered or hung outside to let the breeze do its thing.

Next she gently shoved the piano to pull it away from the wall so she could dust behind it. It didn’t budge.  She  tried again with a less gentle shove…..it resisted again.  Angry now, at both spring cleaning and an immovable large, very heavy object defying her, she gave one more mighty shove and it rolled over her foot….and stopped.  There was no one to hear her but she gave out a pitiful shriek as pain washed over her.  With “grandma” determination she shoved again and was able to free her bloody, injured foot.  She sat down on the bench and let the tears flow freely.  The pain was intense but the anger she felt was greater.  She arose and, with difficulty, made her way out to the passageway that connected her kitchen to  a wash shed.  From the wall she removed a very long, very sharp axe.  She limped back to the now bloody music room where stood the enemy,  tall backed and very heavy.  She took one mighty swing and missed.  She didn’t miss the next time, nor the times after that and an hour later, sweaty and disheveled, she gazed down on a pile of polished mahogany kindling, scattered piano keys and assorted wires.  The enemy was no more.

Being a practical nurse she knew she had to do something about her foot.  Being of Scotch descent she had the determination to act in the face of some of the worst pain she  had ever experienced. She limped to the telephone, three rooms away, and called a taxi to come get her.  She  threw on a light jacket, grabbed her purse  and waited on her front porch.  The driver helped her aboard and hurried to the local hospital where she sometimes cared for patients.  She was well known and saw a doctor without delay.  He commiserated with her, removed her ruined shoe and examined her badly swollen foot.  She had broken her big toe which looked like a large red apple.  He immobilized it gave her some pills for pain and an injection for possible infection and had someone call a cab to take her home.

The kids were not yet home from school when Grandpa walked through the back door from work.  He called out, “Mae, where are you?” but got no answer.  He called again and got a feeble response from  their bedroom down the hall.  As he passed the music room he glanced in and saw piano keys lying on the floor like huge teeth in search of a mouth, a heap of shiny mahogany in a disorderly heap, all illuminated by the bright sun coming in through the bare window.  He gasped, no small thing as my Grandpa was not used to gasping about anything.  A former tough street kid who had fought his share of brawls he was not shocked at much he encountered.  He moved quickly to Grandma and asked, “What the hell happened in there?”

“I was trying to move it and it ran over my toe, so I did away with it,” with only a hint of remorse.

“I’m finished with it so it’s up to you to get it out to the garden and burn it.”

Grandpa, never one to argue with an ax-wielder, set down  his lunch bucket and went in search of his wheelbarrow.  Much later  the magnificent player piano was reduced to a pile of smoldering ashes.  When the kids arrived home from school they saw  embers in the garden, their mother in bed with a washcloth over her face and a very empty music room.  Grandpa was out  in his work shed having a beer.  Afraid they might get involved in whatever was going on they asked no questions.  Their silence did not insulate them from spring cleaning, however.  Grandma just put it off until the weekend when she’d feel better.