Prelude to a cleaning

During my second date with Kelly, she commented several times how messy her car and room were — probably in response for my apologies about how much stuff I had stacked in my extended cab. She was sympathetic to the demands of bachelorhood and understood that when you are always on the go, you spend your time at home sleeping and changing clothes – not cleaning.

So, humorously, I suggested we should do a “trading places” of our own: on one day, she come clean my place while I go an clean her place. Its always more fun to clean someone else’s home.

Last weekend (Sunday the 13th) was Kelly’s birthday. It is also laundry day. And, it was also Pastor Ray’s last Sunday at church, before he and his family move back east. Although it would have worked better for me to come and see her on Saturday, she expressed a desire that I come visit Sunday, and have dinner with another couple – one of her best-friends, and her friend’s husband.

I agreed, went, and had fun, even when changing a flat tire. I stayed later at the meal, making myself late to return to church for Ray’s going-away party. I did enjoy meeting her friends, and just spending time shoe shopping for her on the mall before dinner.

For me, it was a hit-n-run date; nothing major, bordering on the obligatory – as much as I’ll allow it to be for the third date. It was her birthday, afterall.

Monday afternoon, she beats me to the punch and calls to thank me for the day.

“I’m just so thankful for you! You are such a blessing to me! And so this morning I was just telling God how blessed I am because of you, because I know how much you sacrificed to come up for my birthday – the expenses, the gas, the tolls, and not to mention the time and you stayed extra late with my friends… you’ve just blessed me so much and I wanted to share that with God and it occured to me that I wanted to do something to bless you back.”

“Awwwwwh…”, I say.

“And then I received an answer. I thought ‘why don’t I come to The City and clean Parra’s apartment for him!’ I get off work at noon on Friday, and I’ll just come down and we can spend the day cleaning together!!”

I was silent, deep in thought. Sharing the dirt of one’s domicile with someone is a fairly deep intimate exercise. I mean, its one thing if a woman’s group grabs their buckets and heads over to someone’s home to do chores for them – its the group going, and everyone is “doing a job”. Its quite another thing for a woman to sort through dirty underwear and three inch deep stacks of filing.

Honestly, part of me was thrilled with the idea as a concept – what a way to build comraderie and esprit-du-corps! “Hanging with someone” is what I love to do; its my favorite part of spending time with Trynity, or in any relationship.

But, it also seems to me to be a BIG step closer. This is a major escalation on her part. Because of its suddenness, it feels like she’s trying to nest or something. I can’t help but think she will write more into the activity than simple companionship and favor returning (in a matter of form).

My failure to gush my approval creates the silence of her being crushed on the other end of the blower. “I …think …that would be … fine. Great. It could be a great idea. But I need to think about it…”, and I proceeded to tell her why.

After explaining it to her, she still sounded disappointed. “Well, okay,” she says, “you think about it this week and let me know, because I’d really like to do this for you.”

If she was truely praying about it at the time, then it IS an answer to prayer, and who am I to argue with God? “No, Kelly, I don’t need to think about it. It sounds great! Lets just do it and see what happens, eh?”

And we did.