The world has thrown a million things at these windows: smoke, cooking grease, exhaust, mold running down from the shingles in a hard rain. This is no commercial, where a spray bottle of blue elixir makes everything shiny and new. Petrified scotch tape on the storm door once affixed a litany: Black Lives Matter; Food Not Bombs; Immigrants Are Welcome Here. Now it destroys fingernails and yields only to a putty knife. Degreaser. Ammonia. Vinegar. Serious scrubbing before buffing. But gently. Because this house is a dandelion gone to seed. Fragile and full of possibility.
Two guests, one asleep, one introducing herself over and over, with a different name each time. She asks: You ever been a foster mom? You ever been to a hot town? Why’re you washing the windows? The washing is for you, Stacy Margaret Carol Amanda Denise. And so for the Son who longs for you.
Rejoicing in the undreamt-of honor that is tending this house, I wash every millimeter of these windows. Even when I must teeter on the ladder’s top step. Alabaster jars are bought to be broken. To spill their precious oil, anoint His feet, refresh the world.
