two days before.

their t-shirt rags covered the worst of sins, and i had hoped--implausibly and without fail--that the stains inside of me would be wiped away too, just like the dust particles they evicted every saturday morning.  waking up to the scent of lemon pledge and the musty burn of the vacuum cleaner was as certain as waking up to sunrise.  my father's therapist stared him down one day and sent him home, huffing and puffing he was, to heal from the disease of order.  his assignment for the week: to grit his teeth and let the shoes stay in the kitchen.  i think, to my dad, the closet was always italicized, always something that should stop someone in their tracks; something that says, this is important, this deserves special veneration.  to my dad, the closet was the only home for our coats, our shoes.  the rest of us may have shared his belief, but belief without ensuing action didn't impress god and didn't impress my dad either.  we'd leave our docs, our pumas, our heels on the kitchen tile and he would--implausibly and without fail--toss them in the closet.  until the therapist ordered otherwise.  he made it two days before we feared suicidal intent and begged him to return to himself.  it's better to have an alive, albeit persnickety, dad than a dead one.

always, our friends' general consensus upon dropping in was rather unanimous: 'for god's sake, it's a home, not a doctor's office!'  they didn't know, and i don't think we knew this either, that sanitation was a way of incarnating salvation.  this is a very pharisaical admission, but as a child i always felt clean on the inside when i had cleaned the outside.   my muscles still constrict when dirt and disorder collect and i start to feel claustrophobic in wide open spaces if no patterns or limitations exist. 

i've always known my need for cleanliness is a 50/50 win/lose.  the order i impose on the world around me affects my perception of life, of humanity, and of morality.  the problem arises (and i think this is the 'why' behind the therapist's assignment) when i assume the imposed order is reality.  it's not.  it's a fantasy, a game of control.  but it is what i've known; what I've been bred into--the diseases that own me, rather than me owning them.  but i've been given a gift right now, in this moment.  the gift of awareness.  life is disorder and i am a fallen creature and so are they and accepting this--this universal condition--rather than raging against it and trying to make amends for it, is the way to redeem it, to let god redeem the fallenness in me.

if i spend the next two years as a foreigner, learning to accept--even if i accomplish nothing else--i will not have wasted away those years.