Monday, October 10, 2005

Sucking and Blowing

Part II in my apparent series of essays about furniture and furnishings, with warm wishes for a delightful Columbus Day, unless you have syphillis or were stomped on by inquisitorial spaniards, in which case, I hope this day brings you ample opportunities to stick it to the man.  Whatever works for you, dude.

It was the night before our social worker’s first post-placement visit to us, to see how we were managing with our new baby boy.  We’d been attending to various pre-visit necessities for several days - filing court papers, printing out photographs, disposing of old furniture and building new pieces.... we’d been busybusybusy making sure that we’d give a suitably responsible impression and now it was getting late on the much-anticipated final night before the first visit.  I was trying to get the baby to go to sleep but, as usual, he would not let me release him into the arms of Morpheus - he was tired and cranky and crying inconsolably, so Kel put down the vacuum cleaner and stepped up to take over with her special baby-calming skilz.

As we exchanged our respective responsibilities she told me, “I’ve hit an impasse anyway.  The vacuum’s clogged.” I handed the squalling sack of cute over to her and decided I’d make up for being unable to get Zach to stop crying by fixing the vacuum, the two being effective equivalents in the hands of this particular dad. 

Up at the front of the house I saw that Kel had already detached the vacuum hose, robbing me of a quick fix.  She’d approached the problem intelligently, curse her domestic bones.  And, if that hadn’t fixed things, the problem was obviously tougher than I’d anticipated.  I picked up the “cannister” end of the hose, pressed it to my face, and blew hard into it, seeking to dislodge whatever seemed to be in the way.  A cloud of dust poured out of the sweeper end of the tube, but clearly the problem had not been fixed - my Gillespie-like exhalation barely squeaked out of the other side. 

I tried reversing my strategy, blowing in the other end; it was no better.  What started from my lungs as a Jerichoean blast wound up on the other side as a whimpering tweet.  It seemed that something serious would have to be done.  Something invasive. 

I started by trying to disassemble the hose itself, to remove the crook-necked plastic housings from either side so I could run a dowel through it and remove the blockage by brute force.  No such luck - I successfully pulled out a few screws but the housings were attached with more sophistication than I could bring to bear to the task, and I had to reverse course on that strategy and reassemble my handiwork. 

Next, I tried to run a length of string through the hose, hoping to engage in some sort of hoseflossing process, but the string snagged not too far down and went no further.  I’d need to gird up my technique.  After rifling a few drawers I found a small lock from a suitcase, which I tied to the end of the string.  Then I stood on a chair to achieve a nice straight target path, and lowered the now-weighted string into the hose with the patience of a bomb defuser. 

This is when Kel stepped up front, having successfully gotten the boy to sleep, to see me dislodge a few heavy agglomerations of hoseclog onto the hardwood floor.  Kel was impressed, but I knew there was a lot more to come.  I could still feel an almost-solid thrombus impeding the swift intake and passage of air and the consequent disposal of whatever grime resided therein.  I puffed down into the hose again and then dropped my little plumbline.  Kel watched the other end of the dangling hose and saw something, started to pull it out with the hook of a wire hanger. 

It wasn’t anything, really - it was everything: a semi-solid mass of previously-vacuumed material.  When she finally teased it out and it inhaled the unfettered air from the dining room floor, it swelled up until it seemed impossible that so much old floordirt had hung together for so long in a vacuum hose that still seemed to work pretty well.  I recognized leaves from a ficus that had departed our household nearly a year prior.  Of course there was pet hair, but that only went back four months or so.  The damn thing was stratified like alluvial sandstone.  It was like a new roommate. 

We disposed of it forthwith, and then resumed vacuuming.  It had taken a good 20 minutes to clear the hose.  Now the vacuum sounded stronger - doing more work with less effort.  Alsoly*, the air it was venting back out into the apartment smelled fresher and left the room feeling cleaner.  The machine worked faster.  It picked up bigger stuff from farther away.  It was just better.  Life was good.

I wondered for how long we’d been choking ourselves off at our own air supply to implement inefficient means to an inadequate end.  My lungs felt dirty and my face itched from my intimate labors with the black plastic tube, but, having endured those efforts, and now hanging out in a nice clean room devoid of the sour vapors of the vacuum’s erstwhile filth-filtered exhalations, all I smelled was the sweetnes of having put the past behind me once and for all, and letting the present fill up the space reserved for it. 

Needless to say, the meeting with the social worker went just fine.  Thanks for asking, though.

*: “Alsoly” is a patricia lunanina neologism.  If I didn’t give her credit, not only would I pay for it in the next life, but she’d kick my ass in this one.  Thanks for this great word, pea, and for so many others you’ve shared with us.