WEBVTT

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And then the final poem today.

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This is my-- the anniversary
of my mom's death.

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And my mom died at the
top of Mount Lemmon.

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And it's a happy day.

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It's not a sad day.

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It's a happy day for me.

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And she died in 2001, which was
another fantastic wildflower

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year.

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A year of much rain and
when the wildflowers

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were all over the place.

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And my mom had been
in a home for--

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in an adult care home
for about five years.

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The last year and
a half of her life

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she was paralyzed
from the neck down.

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And so my sisters and
I decided to take her.

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She was dying.

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And we decided that she
wouldn't like to die inside.

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So we gave her a
bath and we put her

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in her most beautiful orange
dress, and put on her jewelry,

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and we drove her to the top of
Mount Lemmon where she died.

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And we were happy
that she didn't

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have to die in a hospital
room or in hospice.

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She was outside and she
loved being outside.

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So this poem is called
"Housecleaning."

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And you might wonder
why in the heck

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are you calling
it house cleaning.

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You just lost your mother.

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My mom was a terrible
housekeeper, but--

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oh, well.

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[CHUCKLES]

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And it's not about--
this is what women do.

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When women get nervous they
clean house, like crazy.

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I mean, they go crazy.

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And it's like they were
scrubbing everything, right?

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Oh God, your love left you.

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Oh my God.

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The kid-- the stove,
you take the stove apart

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and you're cleaning
under the burners,

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and you scrubbing your skin off.

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And this is what we do.

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We're trying to
clean the universe.

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[CHUCKLES] "Housekeeping."

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So it starts with
a vacuum cleaner.

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For my sisters.

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"How comforting the animal
suck of the vacuum that

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creates order from the
chaos of a bad news

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call in the middle of the night.

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Upright Kirby or Electrolux
pulled like a Conestoga

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on rubber wheels,
it doesn't matter,

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as long as the hose
lies cozy as a lifeboat

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or locked in the hand
that scans a hardwood

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floor for dust motes.

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Or nozzles into the deep
napped scalp of wall to wall.

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My aunt hated housework.

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Disdained the vacuums
grinding grisly roar

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rattling her ear rings
interrupting her daily soaps.

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So we were afraid
to eat in her house.

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Once stepped over a dead dog."

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This is true.

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"Once stepped over a
dead dog my cousin said

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was sleeping on the barn floor.

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I knew a woman who
swept her floor naked,

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bosom shaking like two jumbo
bags of oatmeal as she laughed.

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It's my house, damn it.

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And anyone who doesn't like
it can always get married."

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[LAUGHTER]

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You can't make that up.

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"Before their
divorce my sister's

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husband bought a carpet cleaner.

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The green machine became
obsessed with getting out

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the deeper dirt in berber
carpets he'd installed.

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Spent weeks shampooing
and sweeping instead of

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writing blues songs that
rang inside memories

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of his own father beating the
tempo of anger into his head.

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The times my mother's
mania dilated the red tide

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in her eyes she
wailed day and night

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and lost the urge
to clean anything.

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So us kids learned housekeeping
as a manual to save our lives.

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We scrubbed, and
swept, and polished

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until there was no visible
evidence of her neglect.

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Grandma kept her
house immaculate

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as the lilac laced
handkerchief she

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stuffed in the hip pocket
of her house dress.

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I remember galvanized
buckets of rainwater

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she collected to
wash her silver hair.

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The lemon smell of oak and
mahogany after she dusted.

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She advised, don't
work as hard as I did.

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Scrubbing floors bends
your back like birch.

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Follow what your
heart says, dance.

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Before my mother died we
bathed her, washed her hair,

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slipped on her best
orange flowered dress.

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Ruby ring, pearl necklace.

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My sister carried her comatose
to my newly washed car.

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I drove and all
three of us daughters

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teased one another
as if we were teens.

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Told her jokes about men
who fell out of trees raking

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leaves.

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Told only sweet memories.

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Climbing 7,000 feet
of slow switchbacks,

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past Meadows rocketed
by the flaming tongues

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of California poppies.

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Desert boulders cracked by
eons of sunstroke and wind.

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Passed lizard, coyote,
hummingbird were, and hawk.

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Passed waxy prickly
pear, and ocotillo bloom.

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Up finally, to ponderosa
pines and juniper's.

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All the way to the top
of Mount Lemmon where

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the hoop of her dusky
breath slowed enough for her

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to leap clean through."

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Thank you so very much.

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And all my friends, thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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