Something's coming, something good

See it? On the horizon? A bright and shining light is coming, ready to illuminate these darkened archways and fill my life with joy. And that's why I'm doing laundry.

There's something quite lovely about doing housework in anticipation of a special guest. Like a lot of things I do for myself as a livealone guy, housework has lost its allure. But if I'm preparing for an honored visitor, suddenly the grime around the faucet that I've lived with for six months is intolerable, and if it takes brillo pads, it's gonna bite the dust.

But it's more that I want to communicate how important this person is to me. I'd gladly fling rose petals on the varandah if I didn't think they'd blow away in the wind (and if I had a varandah).

There's all sorts of things I'd go and buy if I had any money just because this sure ain't the Ritz-Carlton, but I wish it were. See, this is when I wish I had moolah - and a staff. Any staff at all. Major domo, chambermaid, third footman, exec-assist, so I could whip them into a frenzy of preparatory activities, like when Dolly Levi returns to the Harmonia Gardens. And I could use a gold lame outfit and a peacock feather headdress, while I'm at it. Chop chop. "Nora, Ito, Pegeen, dear, you better bring the ladder again." A nice house elf would do. Dobby or even Kreacher. Just someone to punch through my to-do list.

Naw, jus kiddin, because my esteemed guest doesn't give a hoot, I know she doesn't, and it's fun to 'get ready.' What the hell, it's an apartment, thassall. More to the point, I just want to be a better Stevie for a couple of days, a thinner, cleaner, more energetic, hip and happening man so that my visitor will take home a fresh, cheery bleach-scented memory of the Stevie I want to be.

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou describes the one and only time her Uncle Willie, a limping, stuttering man with a shriveled arm and a short leg, mustered all his strength to present to the world a "whole" man. Uncle Willie worked behind the counter of his mother's general store in dirt-poor Stamps, Arkansas, during the twenties and thirties, and once in a great while there would be a customer from out of town, just driving through, who stopped in for an orange ne-hi. On this one occasion, when a husband and wife came into the Store (schoolteachers from Tuskaloosa, Uncle Willie said later), Uncle Willie pulled himself as tall as he could be, tried not to drool and slur, and had a nice visit with these people. As Maya recalls the story, she wonders what it was that made Uncle Willie, on this particular day, want these people to take with them a memory of an uncrippled man. "Maybe he just got tired of being what he was." After the couple left, Maya watched as Uncle Willie sagged back into his usual crooked shape, his mouth once again pulled to one side, his stong limb holding up the rest of his body.

I think I understand.

My heart is full at the prospect of spending time with my honored guest. We're going to have a phenomenal time, no doubt about it. This is truly a dream come true for me. So cue the trumpets, release the doves and tell the spa attendent to throw some crushed lavender in the jacuzzi.

I just wish I looked like Ewan MacGregor, thassall :)