Do any of you remember the 1962 song called “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” by Neil Sedaka? If so, you are officially old. It’s alright, I remember it, too. Anyway, my version is called “Cleaning Up is Hard to Do.” Am I the world’s greatest housekeeper? Far from it. But last weekend, with boredom blooming and energy to spare, I bit the bullet and began to clean up our apartment. I started with the spare bedroom; the one that acts as a receptacle for every piece of crap I’m not sure what to do with.
Guess What? I found Jimmy Hoffa. Okay, I exaggerate. But I did find my grade two and grade four report cards from elementary school. Suffice it to say I was hardly
a paragon of educational excellence. Luckily, my grades improved with age. What troubled me was this: my teacher’s comments were so bland and non-committal, she may as well have been talking about a trained monkey: “Behaves nicely in class”, “Seems to enjoy her work”. Really, that’s all she could say about me?
I also discovered a file folder labelled “Personal”, which totally caught my attention. In it was a stack of letters from one of my old admirers – an octogenarian library patron who frequented the library in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In truth, he only visited the library as an excuse to see me. He said so himself. Back when I was the head of readers’ advisory, I had a large following of older men who spent a little more time than necessary asking for reading recommendations. My colleagues referred to me as a “codger magnet”.
Anyway, let’s call this gentleman Mr. D. He was a highly educated and articulate, retired professor, who used to bring me his recent copies of The New Yorker, because he knew I liked the magazine but was too cheap to buy it myself. He’d also buy new books, read them, then give them to the library. Or to me, with a personal note about why he thought I’d enjoy them.
When my birthday rolled around, he’d sometimes send me a small gift in the mail, again, with a very sweet personal note. The most memorable gift he ever gave me came in the form of a compliment, though. It was undeniably the most romantic thing a man has ever said to me. Or probably ever will. It came one day when I happened to be wearing a hot pink turtleneck sweater, and Mr. D. looked at me, smiled shyly, and said: “Nobody should be allowed to wear pink but you.” I swooned. Thinking about it now, I still do.
While cleaning up is hard to do, it does have its perks.
Shelley Civkin, the retired “Face of Richmond,” was a Librarian & Communications Officer at Richmond Public Library for nearly 30 years, and author of a weekly book review column for 17 years.
