Cleaned Her House for Eight Years, Then Before Moving Away She Asked Me to Come Back Without My Cleaning Supplies – Middle Aged Club

“Can I count them?”

I was halfway up the stairs with a bucket. I stopped. “Willa. We talked about this. You stay in the chair.”

Mrs. Whitaker looked at me. Then at Willa.

“She can count them,” she said. “I’d like to know.”

So my daughter spent that whole snow day walking around Margaret Whitaker’s house with a

sketchpad, counting windows and drawing a floor plan.  Room by  room. She drew the  kitchen with the checkered floor. She drew the living room with the piano. She drew the claw-foot tub.

When

she was done, she presented it to Mrs. Whitaker at the kitchen table.

“Forty-two windows,” Willa announced. “And one of them in the attic is broken. There’s a bird’s

nest in it.”