Down from the domestic pedestal

Admittedly, when a friend candidly refers to me as a domestic goddess, I feel a bit of a thrill.  It’s a cheap, feel-good thrill that I hang on to for a moment, before I guiltily realize that I am far from it.  There is no Martha Stewart-in-the-making with perfect dishes, pies, and hospital bed corners. There’s no underlying Charlotte York with the neat and tidy, tasteful home.  And certainly, there is no perfection in the guise of a Bree Van de Kamp, where everything is properly  in place, even every strand of hair while digging dirt in her garden.

It just so happens that I seem to have developed a passion (sometimes, obsession) to keeping house.  Attacking the laundry, mopping the kitchen floor, attempting a peaceful sanctuary in the bedroom — these I attend to with vigor, even with pleasure.  But most of the time, what goes unsaid, is that there is no time to do it all.  If Matthew gets a wonderfully kept bedroom, with beautifully arranged toys and books before his bedtime, then the dishes have to wait until midnight — or the next morning. If I finish three loads of laundry in one morning, hang them out to dry on a pleasant sunny day, then lunch may have to be store-bought, recycled, or out of something that takes three or less steps — if I’m lucky, my husband would be around to whip something up. If the kitchen is spic and span, with every dish and utensil wash, dried, and put away, every counter cleaned and disinfected, the sink clean and empty, then the living room will still be ready for a continuation of Matthew’s play when he wakes up the next morning.

The truth is, I do the best I can, and it is never enough.  What does that mean for me? It liberates me.  It tells me to get help — or to suck it up.  It tells me that domestic goddesses are probably romanticized ideas of fiction — or very rare, exceptional beings.  And for us who care to have lovely homes, we can get them — just not all  the time, every minute, without sacrificing something.  

It tells me to accept what I am, career-driven or otherwise, a domestic mortal.  Just like the many ones out there.