I really wish my house were clean right now. But I don’t have the energy or the stomach to clean it. This is my perpetual dissonance. Wanting a clean apartment – wall-to-wall carpeting vacuumed, kitchen floor swept and mopped, dishes washed, counter tops cleared and spotless, cupboards organized and easy to access, furniture dusted, cobwebs whisked away, laundry folded and put away, winter turtlenecks and sweaters swapped for spring tops and summer shorts in the dressers, kitty litter changed, garbage all collected and tossed into the dumpster, patio swept, bathroom swept, mopped, scrubbed, disinfected, polished, bed linens changed, windows cleaned, desks organized, books rearranged.

Now really – would I expect anyone to do that in one day? Of course not. But do I feel like shit because I can’t do it in one day? Naturally! I think I have this superhero image of my mother in the eyes of a six-year-old doing all this work in one day. Saturday, to be exact. The day that everything domestic – including laundry, dry cleaning, banking and shopping – got done. It can’t possibly be that all that got done in one day. And let’s not forget Sunday – the day she’d cook spaghetti dinner with all the fixins for as many people as happened to show up that afternoon. These could be my brother with his wife and child, our neighbor Bill, Dad’s friend Jim, Mom’s friend Joan, and a host of other friends-as-family. All that cooking, cleaning, and visiting – after church of course. How did she do it? With a daughter? and a dog? and in a house no less, not a tiny 2-bedroom apartment?

I wish she were here to answer these questions. I trust that from where ever she is, she’s rooting for me, whispering in my ear (I swear sometimes I can hear her), and taking a keen interest in my well-being. Ultimately, though, even with my mother watching out for me from The Other Side, I know it’s my responsibility to find my own happiness here in my home, in my career, in my life. And it doesn’t equate to cleaning my house. I think what I’ve inherited from my mother is the undue equation thus:

My clean house = My personal fulfillment

Where ever she is now, Mom knows this ain’t true. And I know it ain’t true. But you know what is true? The “home” or the domestic front has for countless generations been the domain of Woman. And as a Woman (last I checked) I have inherited the intense connection with the Inner Space of the Home, and I’ve made it my bailiwick. It’s one of the few things I feel I can control, which feels like a slap in the face of all my higher education, teaching experiences, and filmmaking endeavors abroad. How can I have so tightly bound my identity up with the inside of my home? And is it bad? Is it wrong? More questions for Mom.

I have to find these answers myself.