Like looking over a stilled sea, waves arrested by the gaze of their creator, the floor glistened, shining as if newly pressed. The heat from the water created a clever haze, near fog-like as I pushed back, long strokes like oars, side-to-side, quickly with power, covering ten feet at a time.
I could feel my chest and shoulders begin to burn, my legs bent, back arched forward as if in battle fighting my way backward toward a resting place of victory. Never sweating, heartbeat steady…
This is what my body was made for. A fulfillment like never before.
My mop swirled in motion from the motion, the physical energy giving way to Newton’s 1st law, without fail, it was bound to those boundaries. Swirling, swishing, swapping dirt for heat, lapping up the filth of the day. Erasing the masses and their stain upon that sacred ground. At the end of each isle, rinsing, cleansing, and regenerating this fuel put me back down the next valley where victory would be mine.
Done.
The floor was clean.
I won.
My coworker started on the opposite outside isle. I had met him half way down his third isle, the other ten were mine. He was hurling his mop forward, backward, under the lip of the shelving, tangling, running his rolling rinse bucket beside him. He did not know how to mop. He was struggling even to walk in my mind.
Mr. Carrol taught me how to mop when I first started working at the grocery store at 16. I learned to cut meat, run the register, bag groceries (and absolutely killed it), and stock shelves. The cleanup was my favorite part of the day. Mopping was king.
I don’t know why I was taught to mop and the other guys weren’t. But day one when I fixed the first steaming water of suds and bleach, Mr. Carrol took the bucket, and took the first isle, mopping side-to-side in big and heavy sweeps, pressing into the floor like a farmer would hand till, and walking backward as if in a march. He mopped that entire isle, 10 feet wide and 50 feet long in a mere 90 seconds.
Showing me this technique he explained that the mopping and motion would prevent dirt from sticking under the lips, moving it back to the middle and sweeping backward preventing our feet from marking the fresh floor. I love mopping.
I also love to clean. I have a thing for vacuum cleaners and sanitizing. If ever I could make a living doing this it would be a dream, but these jobs are for kids, quasi-retired folks, or folks transitioning into other things. I couldn’t have raised five kids and put four through college mopping floors, but if it were possible…
Most people lament physical labor, cleaning, repairing, and maintaining. I love it. It gives me some of the best fulfillment of anything I do. My 19 year old
shares this love with me. Though I don’t think she has an obsession with it.Honestly, I’m not even sure why I am writing this story except that I lived it, loved it, and long for that complete floor to shine. Some of the greatest discoveries of my life happened during those early teen years in that grocery store. The hours went by like seconds and the engagement with the public was exhilarating. I guess that when we love to do certain things, it just doesn’t feel like work.
Much of my life has been this way. I hated raking leaves and I hated raking dirt. Other than that, I love most labor. Unfortunately my body has a different direction. But, just the same, I love what I am still able to accomplish.
When it comes to other things. Music, magic, ministry, and Medicare, I find the same joy, longing to meet the next adventure. This drive is a passion. Not just the finished work, that is good too, but the anticipation of the work, the work itself, and the final flick of the lights and locking the door… knowing I will return tomorrow and do it all again.
I even have this same passion with my relationships. My marriage, even in seasons of stress, is approached with the same zeal. Parenting? Well, I’ve failed more than I want to admit. But the journey is as great as the reward of these wonderful people I have raised with my wife.
I don’t know what it takes to find joy in these things, it just happens for me. And I do know what it feels like for the joy to die. Especially when people hurt you, lie to you, misunderstand you, and seek to destroy you. Even then, I fought to find meaning and passion in reconciliation, yet what other people do is out of our control. So I have learned to find fulfillment in giving up the mopping in the lives of others.
For too long I felt like I had the ability to solve the problems around me, fix the senses, hone the passions, and help people avoid suffering. But I don’t. So the more I cleaned, the more I mopped, the harder it became. In that I lost sight of the journey and only saw the fails.
But, now… I’ve learned to love the small things again.
I long for making more life together with those closest to me, the new friends I have yet to meet, and teaching someone, maybe, how to mop like I do.
I love mopping.