My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or
block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?

—Erma Bombeck
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I’m getting company at my house this weekend. Family. Some remnants of the great influx of Waglers that will be flowing in. For a wedding this Saturday.

And so they’ll come, the Waglers and the Yutzys. From all points of the country. By air, by land. But none by sea, as far as I know. To observe and celebrate. To witness and rejoice.

My sister Rhoda and her family will stay upstairs, in my still-empty apartment. And I mean empty. No furniture, nothing. At least it’s passably clean. Bring your pillows, air mattresses and sleeping bags, I told them. And my niece Janice, who I haven’t seen in more than two years, planned to come and sleep on my living room couch.

I’m looking forward to it. To seeing everyone, hanging out, the merry boisterous times. I’m more than delighted to play host and reciprocate a bit of the hospitality my siblings have always shown me when I visited their homes.

But to a man who has lived alone now for two-plus years, it’s cause for a bit of, well, shall we say, mild concern. I haven’t had much company, other than guy friends, at my house in a long time. And guys hanging out and snacking with my award-winning chip dip (in my eyes, at least) while watching football or baseball or Nascar usually don’t pay much attention to their surroundings. Not that they’d be even slightly concerned or offended by a messy house.

My house is comfortably cluttered. Stacks of things. Books. Boxes of this and that. Empty steel ammo boxes I use for storing things. Plastic storage tubs with lids. Bags of groceries on the kitchen table. Chips. Tinned food. Cases of water stacked in the porch. More books. Numerous pairs of shoes strewn about. Several coils of new rope I picked up at a gun show (never know when it might come in handy). Hunting knives and other outdoor gear. Backpacks. Clean shirts hanging where they dried weeks ago. And, of course, more books.

A stranger would conclude it’s a hopeless mess. The stranger would be wrong. I know where everything is. I have a system. When I need something, I pluck it from its spot and go. Throw it back when I’m done. It works for me.

So the thought of company, well, all are welcome of course. But when Janice offered to “clean my house” while she’s here, I half panicked. Not that I wasn’t greatly touched by such generosity.

“All I ask is that you have cleaning supplies around somewhere,” she said cheerfully.

Of course. Cleaning supplies. I’m sure Ellen had some such stuff way back when, stuck away in cabinets and kitchen drawers. I made a mental note. Check cleaning supplies.

But before Janice could clean, I figured I’d better get things spruced up a bit. Pre-clean the house so the real house-cleaner won’t be too horrified.

So last weekend I hit it. Vacuumed. Dusted. Swept. Wiped. Discovered some floor and table areas that had not seen the light of day for months. Stacks of books were carefully packed in large plastic storage tubs. Old newspapers discarded. Throws and spreads carefully laundered. The windows, well, the blinds were kept down as always. The way my windows are looking these days, soon I won’t need blinds. Light won’t be able to penetrate, in or out.

This spring, as usual, my house has been overrun by vast hordes of tiny little black ants. Itty bitty things. Swarming everywhere. A few weeks ago, I placed ant traps around the house. Ant hotels, I think they’re called. For some reason, the little pests ignored them completely. Traipsed blithely by. Then last week I went out and bought some sweet poison, brand name Terro. Placed drops of it on little pieces of cardboard and set them about here and there.

Instantly, the ants’ behavior changed dramatically. They congregated as if for church service. Or even better, a deadly revival. Little black rings circled my drops of poison, everywhere I placed them. The drops disappeared, the ants kept coming. I refreshed their supplies daily, bought more Terro, and refreshed supplies again. Near as I can tell, there’s about as many ants as before; when one staggers off to die, another springs forth to replace him. But at least now they are all congregated around my offerings. In out of the way places, not on the table or around the food or in the fridge, which they had somehow infested.

And so my house was about as ready as it was going to get for Janice, the cleaner. Then, on Monday, alas, an email. Apologetic. She couldn’t make it. Had to cancel her ticket. Some things had come up at work and the schedule wouldn’t allow it.

My first reaction: Disappointment, of course. I haven’t seen Janice in more than two years. In Florida, in February, 2007. So I’d been looking forward to hanging out and catching up. Now, none of that. Oh, well.

My second reaction, closely following the first: Drat. All that house cleaning, for what? Sheesh. Next time I’ll wait until she’s on the plane. Could have left it like it was. Messy. Comfortable. Cluttered. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Oh, well. Again.

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Almost twenty-six years ago, back in 1983, on a hot August day, a child was born to my brother Steve and his wife Wilma. Their second. A little boy.

It was August 24th. My birthday. We were filling silo that day at my brother-in-law Alvin Yutzy’s farm. As I struggled to lift the heavy bundles of corn stalks from the ground and heave them onto the wagon, I muttered to whoever was working with me, “They’d better name him Ira.”

That’s a bit of an Amish tradition, although not poured in concrete. If a niece or nephew is born on your birthday, walla, you have a namesake. But Ira is a pretty rare name, even among the Amish. It’s really more of a Jewish name. So I wasn’t sure if my brother and his wife would do it. Burden their young son with a name like that.

But they did. Named the boy Ira Lee. I beamed with pride. Now, even if I never had a son of my own, there was someone to carry on my name.

I left Bloomfield for good around the time Ira Lee started grade school. After that, we had only periodic contact. For the first ten years or so, I faithfully sent him a greeting card each year on his birthday, a crumpled $5.00 bill tucked inside. Which was a princely sum for both me and him.

In the mid 1990s, Steve and his family moved east into Lancaster County. A rare thing for Midwestern people to do, move into the furious rat race that is Lancaster. But they did. Settled here. Successfully. Ira Lee finished his education, graduating from Faith High School. And in the next few years, acquired an Associate’s Degree in Business.

He grew into a tall, quiet young man. Taller than me by several inches. The stubborn independent Wagler streak runs in him. He often did things on the spur of the moment, in a manner that befuddled his Lancaster peers. He’s traveled the country. Toured Europe on a shoestring budget. Excels in sports. He is an accomplished writer, as those who have enjoyed his hilarious Harmon stories well know.

He is my nephew. My namesake. I’m proud of him.

This Saturday, at one o’clock, he will marry his fiancé, the lovely Rosa Miller.

I wish them well, as they join their hands and lives for their future together. May God bless their new home, in ways beyond their imagination.

They have honored me by assigning me duties as an usher at the wedding. I’m very proud to accept. For a brief time, at least, the usher is the most powerful person at a wedding. He can seat you at a spot where you can actually see and hear what’s going on, or banish you to the back benches, where there is wailing and much grief.

So to any who are attending, I’m always open to some discreet persuasion. Grease my palm with, say a $20, and I’ll get you a seat of honor, up front. Sass me, stiff me, and you’ll be seated at the back with all the bawling babies. So far back you won’t even know you’re at a wedding.

Such raw power could surge to one’s head and make one giddy. Hope I can handle it.

It’ll be fun. I can’t wait.

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Last week’s post created a firestorm, resulting in an astounding forty-six comments. A record. Left all others in the dust. And that’s not even counting the dozen or so private emails I got from readers practically weeping with relief that someone had finally expressed their own frustrations.

This week I’m celebrating the wedding. And hanging out with family and freundschaft and roaring and having a good time. In the near future, perhaps even as soon as next week, I may dig in a little to examine and analyze the reasons the “Heathen” post struck such a nerve.