UP AND DOWN STAIRS: A STUDY IN ACCUMULATION

I'm going to clean the stairsteps today. You come too, as Robert Frost would say. You probably won't have as much interest or fun as you would have for Frost when he went out to clean the pasture spring and invited us along, poetically.

With Frost you'd be traipsing across a green field, smelling of seasonal freshness, pulling out dead leaves from the spring and seeing the clear water flow up and out again, no doubt tickling the fiddlehead ferns and making the buttercups shiver with thankfulness.

At the end of my mundane project, if it is reached today, you'll smell only Mr. Clean (lemon) and Pledge (lemon). I took both companies to task by letter, objecting to their change from their original pleasant fragrance to lemon.

Everyone's cleaning product seems to have turned to lemon odor I told them. Why don't you stick to your own inimitable original fragrance? Mr. Clean replied that everyone like lemon odor these days and they were going along with it. Bunch of sheep! Pledge didn't reply but I see they have "original" odor cans back on the shelves as well as their lemon ones.

Do you suppose I was the only one who objected? Naw, it would take a Gallop poll of thousands I suppose.

Back to the stairs I propose to clean. This is the flight that leads to the second floor which is off limits to anyone except Steve, Viney, Lauren and her friends or an excess of overnight kinfolks descend. This second floor has been a playhouse and storage place for three generations, with no domestic cleaning help nor arrangement manager. When the excess of overnight kin come, some have to search for the upstairs beds.

The basement stairs are kept a little less cluttered. That's because if I fall from top to bottom of them I'm likely to land on concrete, headfirst, half my skull flying under the workbench, the other half under an ancient table that holds: 1. Old shingles from the first roof put on the house in case some got blown away. Two more roofs have been added, hence more saved shingles; 2. Some lengths from three different kings of carpets I've had over the years. It's reasonable to expect that worn places might have to be covered some time; 3. A box of huge pine cones. One never knows when one will need a pine cone; 4. Some laths that, if memory serves me right, were to be used to uphold a bougainvillea vine. The bougainvillea never thrived; 5. One rusty mousetrap.

From that possible fall down the basement steps my spectacles would, no doubt, be in smithereens, scattered all over the floor, catching gleams of sunshine from the west windows if it were a sunny day. I'd resent that. It would seem as if the basement had become glittering for a special occasion when it will only be a split skull. One leg might be out at a right angle from the knee. The other at only a 45-degree angle for one of my shoes will probably be hooked under the hood of the furnace. Arms? Who know? Maybe one will be stretched out, trying to catch my receding half skull, the other holding my stomach which has come loose.

I've got to quit going down those stairs even if I try to keep them uncluttered. My scenarios are too bloody grotesque. They bring on nightmares who have little colts off and on all night.

Now, back to the flight of stairs I intend to clean today. There, on the bottom step, is a foot high stack of newspapers. I save them for recycling every two weeks. This is helpful for my friends and me. If I or them missed something in a paper they know I have it at least for two weeks.

An now, right on top of the stack I see one of George Will's columns I missed. I stopped to read it. He is arguing, in his scholarly way, with Ted Kennedy that it is not "the ballot box where all change begins in America." George argues that good change begins in an Eli Whitney, a John Fitch, a John Rockefeller, Alexander Bell, a Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John Wesley Hyatt, Ray Kroc, Jonathan Edward, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harper Lee, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, Scot Joplin. Their names are like drum beats on American society leading us into paths that political shenanigans never heard of.

Fearing that I'll never get the steps cleaned, I go for the big plastic bag into which I shove the papers before something else I missed meets my eye.

On the second step are boxes, big and little. I put on or two of them side by side to see how they could be made into one of my little calico-covered houses. I want to make a replica of the house of seven gables some day. "Some of these boxes have to go," I tell myself and throw out two or three.

On the third step are stacks of books I've brought down from upstairs to read and which need taking back upstairs some handy day. I pick up the top one. "Things to do in February," is the title. Just in case I overlooked anything, I leaf through it again and find, "Look for bluebirds." Well, why not?

I went to the south window and looked out where a white fence formerly separated by neighbor's years from mine. About 30 years ago a flock of 12 to 15 Missouri bluebirds lit on the fence and stayed for a while, fluttering and twistering about a living picture I'll never forget. Some time each February I go to look for them. It's a "Come back, Little Sheba" thing with me. No bluebirds.

At the top of my stairs, leading to the second floor there is a peculiar architectural turn, due to lack of space. I looked back down the still cluttered stairway and though that someday I'm going to fall down these stairs, top to bottom, but there are 101 things to soften my fall fuzzy Teddy bears, raccoons, and rabbits (toys), old quilts hanging from banisters I can grab onto, etc. etc., but among the 101 things to easy my fall not one Dalmation. I doubt if a Dalmation, proverbially know to live at spic and span fire stations and ride on bright, shiny, "up-to-snuff" fire trucks, would want to live with me.

I pick my way very carefully down to the third step where I stopped de-cluttering and went to get a cup of coffee. Tomorrow, I'm going to clean the rest of the steps. You come too.

REJOICE!