Flea Free

Lay down with dogs, my grandmother told me grimly, get up with fleas.

She was angrily dousing the furniture with a vile smelling homemade remedy after having discovered a flea in her bed the previous night. The dogs had been put out early after a pre-dawn blitz raid, bathed and dipped in record time and exiled to the back porch while she began furiously stripping the linens from the downstairs bedrooms. I was assigned to the sunporch and charged with de-fleaing the chairs and twin couches with the nasty remedy she had brewed. She loved the dogs but her expectations of them were high and the very concept of fleas offended her sense of hygiene and proper breeding. She worked tirelessly the entire day and the sun was setting when she pronounced it fit for habitation. The dogs timidly crept in to their blankets alongside the old wood stove, unsure of what exactly they had done wrong but anxious to be forgiven. After supper she surreptitiously slipped them both a bone, as if to say that she knew it wasn't their fault. My mother was ordered to keep both dogs bathed on a weekly basis, I will not tolerate a flea infested home, Nana told her sharply, and you neglect them as it is. No more! My mother began a sullen defense but gave it up when she saw Nana's expression. The subject was closed, my grandmother's face clearly said, and there would be no further discussion. The weekly dog baths were immediately delegated to my brothers and myself.

Nana had a habit of setting her expectations of those around her too high and she was routinely exasperated with our failure to meet her standards, but she never gave an inch and never settled for less than she thought we were capable of. She maintained a zero tolerance policy about laziness, half efforts, sloppy housekeeping, the whole truth, self pity, emotional melt downs and keeping your shirt tucked in. She was a force to be reckoned with, a rock of stability, and always a safe place to go. When she had her stroke, she still got up and got dressed and started her morning routine just as if nothing was out of the ordinary, never mentioning it to my daddy, never cutting herself any slack. It was only hours afterward when she began having trouble speaking and difficulty with her balance that she would even allow for the possibility that something might be wrong. In part, her Nova Scotian stubborness contributed to her death - an irony she would have scorned mightily. At the cemetery, my daddy hugged me and whispered in my ear, Heaven help heaven now that your grandmother's there.