A missive on benefits of the mundane

Contributed by Hyman Weisbord, who annually leaves his Laurentian home and hides out in Thailand to escape winters. He won't share the location of his hideaway. There appears to be a beach not too far.

Intimacy lives in the mundane.

You might be tempted to call it mundane when I first asked my cleaning lady what type of mop she preferred to use when washing the hardwood floors of my house.

I was asking from experience, and perhaps to establish comfort, egalitarianism, familiarity between us.

I had washed those floors many times myself and now that I was able to hire a pro, I wanted pro tips.This I told her.

My go-to mop had been one of the wood-handled old timers with the long, thick, grey wooly head.

A bitch to wring out. I felt it just smeared the dirt around. To my credit, I did mix Murphy’s Soap in the warm water. I loved the lemon-fresh smell and I was told that this soap was gentler on hardwood than say, Hertel All Purpose.

Anyways, Murphy’s Soap definitely had that great lemon-fresh smell … a must for me while sweating with a mop fiercely driven.

So. There you have it.

You’ve lasted a whole paragraph pondering the mundane with me and today, in these times of chaos, violence, vengeance, inhumanity, greed and fear, I’m going to take you away to touch down lightly on my visits to the mundane in a way that might give you too some respite from the shit show news cycle.

I take on the most arduous tasks in keeping a clean home.

For years, ours was an occasional Airbnb rental and we consistently ranked “Super Hosts,”

I’m the guy that wilfully attacks the burnt pots and gross toilet bowls. While I will save you from a discussion on pot bottom surfaces and scouring pads, I definitely

have a short tale to tell about toilet brushes.

Basically, I thought I had seen and tried them all. I’ve used the flimsy white plastic-handled ones that allow you to gently rub the bowl. (Don’t press too hard or the handle will snap.)

I’ve used toilet brushes with thick stainless steel handles that have large fulsome brushes on their ends which, under different circumstances, could be used for grinding your initials into dry cement. I’ve used brushes that rest in an upside-down plastic clam shell which closes neatly around the brush when you park it on the floor .

But never had I seen the type of toilet brush that greeted me when I moved into my rented fishing cabin in Northern Quebec this past summer.

Granted, the handle was flimsy, but that did not matter to me. What this brush had was, wonder of wonders, an “ appendage,“ a mini-brush pointing back toward the handle like a small, white bristly penis perched on a set of big bristly white balls.

For scrubbing under the rims! A seismic shift for me in the mundane world of toilet brushes.

Oven mitts came up a few years later.

It was at a fancy dinner party around my dining table, eight people, grilled wild salmon, fresh asparagus, new potatoes, Caesar salad with a home made dressing … linen napkins to wash the next day.

Present, my buddy from England, ex of the BBC and a fearless documentary filmmaker during the Vietnam War, Pinochet and other mistakes of history. Also in attendance, Gavin, my cousin’s son, 42 years old, American, a federal accredited lobbyist for the Librarians Association of the Americas. Beneath that placid exterior, a razor wit.

There were others -- smart, accomplished, worldly -- and since I had just burnt a finger juggling a baking tin topped with grilled salmon off the BBQ using only a dish cloth, I asked the group if anyone had a proper set of oven mitts to recommend.

Latex was high on the list, but I had already owned those and did not find them pliable enough.

The padded fire proof fabric type was recommended, but I found they soiled from grease too easily.

No one could go beyond these suggestions. I know that for many around the table, this part of the discussion was an eye-rolling bore. It did not meet the high bar of relevant intellectual interest. (They had not just burnt themselves!) There was an embarrassed silence .

And then Gavin asked: “Have you tried the Ove Glove.” And no one had.

Three weeks later, an Amazon package arrived with my name on it and I had received, from the thoughtful and wonderful Gavin, my first Ove Glove to try out.

Not all the world’s mundane resides in home care and kitchen utility products. You can find it in the subject matter of great films:

“The current popular movie about a toilet cleaner is "Perfect Days"

(2023), directed by Wim Wenders, following the simple, routine life of a solitary public toilet cleaner named Hirayama in Tokyo, finding beauty in everyday moments, music, and nature, and earning critical acclaim and awards, including Best Actor for Kōji Yakusho.

And great books:

Like The Passion by Jeanette Winterston, one of my sister’s all-time favourite reads.

Here’s the first line of the plot summary.

Henri, born in a French village to a religious mother and a farmer father, joins the army of Napoleon Bonaparte, where he is assigned to strangle chickens for Napoleon’s dinner.”

Truth be told, I have not seen the former nor read the latter. But, if great themes can be constructed from toilet cleaners and chicken stranglers, let us agree that we may find respite, solace, common cause and a moment of inner peace discussing mops, oven mitts and toilet brushes.

For many, this is our escape from the noise, or our launch pad towards self-help, activism, giving back, fierce arguments and gentle loving.

It is our touchstone, it is our meditation.

After 10 years of career building in Europe, my daughter moved back to Canada to continue her work and to live in the Laurentian mountains on the family property, close to the lakes and trails of her childhood.

She’s a busy woman, leading a team of 30 for a multi-billion dollar multinational engineering company. She is a specialist in digital solutions to water management.

She travels half the year and her refuge is her home, the forest, the lakes, the air, the stars at night, perhaps the mundane.

And her dog.

I tell you this not because I’m a proud Dad ( which I am ), but because she is now my close

neighbour and so, when I see her with her pooch outside my window, I let my dog out so they can play together. I throw on some clothes and dash out to catch her for a brief chat.

We talk about pet food and dog leashes, snow conditions, Costco purchases and car tune

ups.

Last time we spoke I had to excuse myself because I was freezing and my parting quip was: “So nice to have these profound Father/Daughter discussions with you.”

I checked my phone once in and she had immediately texted me: “Intimacy lives in the mundane."

To that I say : “Believe it !"