Humility

Cleaning my own office, waiting room and rest room keeps me humble. Dori in the office "suite" next door tells me that she hired a fabulous cleaning service and says she can pass their number on to me. Trust me. I'm tempted - I've toyed with the idea of hiring a cleaner from time to time since being in private practice. But, readers, you couldn't swing a cat in my office space (where on earth did that expression come from?) and despite being irritated by the fact that I not only have to clean my house, I also now have to clean my little office unit, I still can't bring myself to hire a cleaner. How lazy would a person have to be?

For a start, the actual therapy office is small - maybe 12' square - and the waiting room and restroom are almost one and the same, amounting to probably no more than 10 square feet . When there are patients waiting in the wait room and another patient wants to use the bathroom, they practically have to sit on each other's laps to get past each other. It's very, well, intimate to say the least. I have a sound machine in the waiting room which is turned up as high as possible, but keeping the space private is challenging at times, and having a cleaner here, despite the fact that my files are under lock and key, would exacerbate that challenge. For example, my phone has caller ID, so if the cleaner was in there alone, he/she would be able to see who was calling in. There's nothing that identifies client's names and addresses on my desk at night, but I imagine scenarios whereby the cleaner might forget to lock the door on their way out, leaving my files vulnerable to break-ins. So, thus far, no cleaner.

I am, however, no stranger to house and office cleaning. When I lived in London I put myself through business school (long story for another time) by working for a cleaning company. In fact, a little known fact is that I used to clean Elton John's press flat in Central London. (It was on North Audley Street, not far from my college which was on South Molton Street at the time - but has since closed down.) And yes, he was there once or twice, in bed. But we never formally met. (The "help" was kept away from the celebrity clients!)

When my daughter was first born, I was young and newly married and didn't want to put her in childcare, so took her with me to several cleaning jobs that I had. One was for a loud, raucous Italian family called the Manzi family, whose patriarch was a successful "punk rocker" and was one of the movers and shakers behind the record label, Stiff Little Fingers. The family was turbulent, tormented and miserable and I befriended their 14 year old daughter, Silvana, who would spend hours at our flat, playing with the baby, and complaining about how her parents didn't understand her! I often wonder what happened to Silvana.

The other cleaning job was for a woman in her late 40's (which seemed incredibly old to me at the time) who, along with her husband, performed cabaret acts at local nightclubs. She had white shag rugs throughout the whole house and my then 5 month old daughter would lie on a blanket in the middle of the floor while I literally raked patterns in the rug, according to specified designs by the cabaret singer. When she was particularly pleased with my "work" she would tip me in pot roast. Yep, you can't make this stuff up. Oh, and I was a vegan at the time, so you can imagine that this went down well! Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I would pass the pot roast onto my grateful friend, Dina, also a young newly married mother whose son, Christo, was born at the same time as my daughter and in the same hospital ward at the Whittington Hospital (named after Dick Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, immortalized by the nursery song of the same name) in Islington, London.

Since then, I have cleaned many apartments, many offices and swore that I would never hire a cleaner. "If you can't clean your own house," I was known to pontificate, "then your house is too big!" I've softened a little in my old age and often suggest hiring cleaners to over-worked, stressed-out parents who can afford it. And, when my daughter was trying to find a way to supplement her meager salary as a Preschool Teacher, we hired her to clean our house twice a month for twice the going rate.

So, back to the issue of my office. I guess I'll continue to clean it myself. There's something about being responsible for vacuuming, dusting and cleaning the restroom that is soothing. Besides which, for reasons that I cannot figure out, it really does keep me humble. And that's not such bad thing.