Springtime in Savannah is a mixed tote of emotions.
Obviously, there’s the ecstasy: Where else on earth at this moment does the breeze caress like an adoring angel with a Southern drawl? What worldly worry is not dissolved by the scent of tea olive trees wafting under a gentle sun scantily cloaked in gauzy clouds?
April apparently brings out the euphoric bumblebee in all of us; yesterday I saw a grown man frolicking amongst the clover in Daffin Park.
Which brings us to the agony: Our sinuses may have recovered from the neon yellow rails of pollen we inadvertently snorted during our plant friends’ annual sexfest, but there are still nuisances of the season to suffer.
Just when you thought it was safe to go outside without a hanky or wash your car without ending up looking exactly the same ten minutes later, here comes another mess.
Surely you’ve noticed gobs of crunchy brown confetti blanketing the streets and mucking up windshields, entire mats of them clogging the storm drains. (Pretty sure that when Aristotle said nature abhors a vacuum he didn’t mean she throws litter around like those awful drivers on Abercorn who toss their fast food bags out the window.)
These vexatious wormy curlicues are called catkins, and they’re the spent male members of our beloved oaks. FYI, oak trees are monecious, meaning they contain both genders and so seed themselves; no need for any of the complications of coupling, so independent and evolved!
Having released their reproductive payload upon the tree’s flowery lady parts and all over everything else, catkins shrivel up and flutter to the ground en masse, as if the trees are in a real big hurry to wash that man right outta their Spanish moss hair.
Party’s over kids, time to tidy up and start this cycle over again!
Nature isn’t the only one in the throes of spring cleaning. As part of the human mating ritual of trying to impress one’s partner by performing chores that no one can tell have been done, my dear husband spent the previous weekend precariously perched on the roof removing the winter’s sludge from the gutters. Only he was too early — the catkin death drop rendered his efforts impotent, and he had to spend another day slinging wet detritus and calling the huge water oak in our yard obscene names.
I have my own regular contributions to the invisible monogamy chore ballet, such as spreading out his bath towel so it doesn’t mildew and replenishing the sliced turkey as if by magic. But an annual deep cleanse of our home is not one of them. Last week I read Iridescent Ordinary’s treatise on spring cleaning with the brisk avoidance of someone who found out yesterday that the dishwasher does not in fact wash itself, though it was a humbling reminder that having a home to clean is a privilege.
This sparkling sage also mentioned the historical roots of spring cleaning, including the pre-Passover tradition of hunting down every last crumb of bread before going leaven-free for eight days (like Keto, only more plagues.) Known as “searching for chametz,” the observance involves a candle, a feather, a wooden spoon, and a paper bag, which to gentiles probably sounds like the elements of a mysterious junior high slumber party game.
My family didn’t do any of that when I was growing up; it was enough to give our leftover bagels to our Catholic neighbors, which they loved. For a few years I did try to convince the children that throwing out the half-eaten packets of Goldfish from their rooms was part of the seder prep, but it didn’t stick. At this point I just put masking tape over the cereal boxes and call it kosher-ish.
However, this week we had a few rooms painted, and sanding off six layers from the baseboards left an unignorable sheen of dust, as if the catkins had gotten inside the house and jizzed on every surface.
And so I found myself forced into the first legit spring cleaning ritual ever performed in our 18 year residency of this abode, apparently enough time for enough shedded dog hair to grow an entirely new pet behind the sofa. Guess who else abhors a vacuum? (Fortunately, I was invigorated by the purifying sounds of Savannah’s favorite house band SOAP, who got a whole lotta funk out at The Wormhole Friday night.)
The major timesuck of this task was deconstructing all the little altars everywhere, arrangements of picture frames and feathers and special cards and pretty rocks to remind me of the small, beautiful moments in a grand, lucky life. Surveying all of it with a purifying eye, however, made me want to burn down the house.
For example, a single windowsill in the kitchen contained:
An aloe cutting going bonkers in spite of not being watered in six years
An original Leslie Lovell sculpture bought from the opening week of the deeply missed Roots Up Gallery
An old glass bottle full of cotton fluffs with seeds picked from a field in North Georgia
A clay bowl made by Charles Ellis Montessori thumbs holding assorted sharks’ teeth found on Tybee
Alligator fangs plucked an intact jaw washed up on Little St. Simon’s on our 20th anniversary
A driftwood sign declaring “You Are Loved” painted at Hostel in the Forest
A plastic “diamond” ring procured from the old school toy vending machine at the Red and White the first time the kids were allowed to walk there by themselves
My neighbor’s last camellia, thieved
Dozens of other bits and bobs I can’t remember why I saved
I have several friends already engaged in the practice known as Swedish death cleaning, even though they’re barely middle-aged. Not only will this save their children from the hassle of clearing out their belongings after they drop off life’s tree, but they are also enjoying a lovely, clutter-free home.
I, on the other hand, apparently want to be surrounded by all my shit until I die, a practice I have decided to call Jewish junk hoarding.
Sponging the grime from several tiny figures rescued from the dashboard of the Absurdivan, I had to face the fact that we are and always will be tsotchke people. (My bubbe defined tsotchkes as “stuff you have to dust;” I bet she’s having a real laugh now since a lot of this crap was hers.)
Then I thought about how nature sheds all the leaves and flower petals and little man curlicues onto the ground, where the layers languish and degrade and compost to provide fertile ground for new growth.
Perhaps my collecting of objects like an exuberant old crow is a way of feeding my life with meaning, keeping my mind and heart arable and ready to grow. Maybe each tsotchke is a rejoinder to savor the memories and moments, ever hopeful for more of them as we frolic through the days to come.
In the end, I put almost everything back, the gleaming shelves hidden by the careful arrangements of my random talismans. My kids can throw the whole mess in the firepit after I’m gone. For now, however, I plan to keep on accumulating little altars. But maybe I’ll learn to dust more regularly.
I was still wiping down the last of the quartz crystals from Ordinary Magic when my male counterpart wandered in from the yard. I waggled my eyebrows and swept my arm across the kitchen, showing off my work.
He cocked his head. “Hmm, I can’t really tell.”
That’s fine. Wait ‘til I remind him that the sweetgums are about to drop their balls.
Always something to dust, inside and out ~ JLL
Firstly, I am so glad to know you. You are our priceless Savannah icon. I love your words and how they describe and paint our quirky Savannah life. (I’m not saying that because we want to be invited to your Seder😉)
I am so glad that you gave the correct name for those curly Velcro things because I had no idea what they were called. I’m from the North and I can’t even explain to my northern family and friends how evil the Live Oak Trees are in every season!
Coming from Ohio I am totally accustomed to acorns, or so I thought. Please explain to me how the trees manage to throw small acorns with the velocity of a MLB pitcher. I feel like Dorothy when the trees were throwing apples at her! I shield my head as I race down the driveway. In Ohio, the acorns are larger than here, but they drop in secret. You see them on the ground, but you never see them fall. Here, you know it has started because it sounds like your skylights are breaking.
While I’m on the topic of projectiles, someone could have told me the likelihood of walking up the sidewalk to my house and barely missed getting hit by a squirrel. A dead squirrel. Without guts. Looking up to see where from it fell, I see an owl above me circling lazily and laughing at me.
I’ve lived in Savannah for 15 years. Is there anything else I should be aware of?
I can't tell you how much I love this and relate to it. As I packed and unpacked my life into boxes to move into our new hopefully final home, I did think long and hard about the death purge and to be quite honest, it was just so sad to imagine living without my things, (which I sometimes call vignettes). I think you are more correct when you call them alters because I do basically adore and worship everything that I have hung on to at this point. Even more assurance that weirdos like us are going to be just fine. Let the kids worry about it. When my parents passed away a year apart from each other, it was extremely painful going through their things but also very healing. They were very sentimental which is a nice way of putting liked to keep all of their crap just like I do. Thank God they were not hoarders but some of my siblings might question that. By the way, I too have the tchotchke I bid on from the Absurdavan in my possession.