My mother was extremely neat and organized. I remember discovering after my father's death a metal file box. Inside this box my mother kept all the house and insurance papers, the bill and tax receipts. Though my father constantly criticized my mother for being weak and incompetent, it was my mother who ran our household.
As most daughters vow, I swore I would never be like my mother. But women absorb their culture's values and pronouncements through their thin-skinned pores whether we are aware of this media saturation or not. If I haven't done the dishes the night before, every morning I have to do the sink's dishes before I can begin my day. And I have to walk around my house and pick up stray hats and dropped clothing or rearrange crooked pillows. When my husband and I first lived together, he'd drop his garments everywhere. This sent red flags flying from my psyche and I had to get him a wicker laundry basket.
I ran a home child care program for nearly eight years and every morning parents arrived to a tidy and orderly living environment. It's not to say that my daughter and the other children didn't make messes and have fun, but my days had to start “put back together” and anew.
My nest is empty now and I dearly miss the hub bub and chaos of those children years. I even miss our dog and her shedding hairs and muddy paws. I find I vacuum and dust less. And trying to remove the “Hausfrau” label, I allow books to pile on tables, hats to live off hooks and even clothes to hang on chairs.
Still I see how deeply I am like my mother and how deeply I have accepted the calling of the fifties woman: My home is my castle and my home is my soul's center. I have wondered at my obsessive-compulsive need to have dishes done daily and to keep everything in its place. Am I as a woman to keep my place? I have a man who doesn't care how far a field I wander and who respects my moods and my intellect. We raised a daughter who is both similar to her mother and my opposite: daring to be herself, not influenced by media fashion and feminine hype, not worried about cleaning or tidying her living space. She and her girl friend recently moved in together. Already they have been to Home Depot and IKEA. I can't wait to see what their apartment looks like without the benefit of gender and with the benefit of a more alternative upbringing.
Was housework for my mother a form of meditative escape? Was it a way of keeping her turbulent life with a semi-violent, angry man under control? Lately I have noticed I rush into cleaning whenever emotional chaos ensues. When time-passage fears and anxieties begin to crowd my mind, my wiping away of dirt, my putting things away is something tangible I can do to reestablish my center. When the conservative, non-compassionate leanings of our American culture and the world's non-stop violence overwhelms me, I can sweep my concerns out the door, shake the negative dust from the rugs, or furiously scrub the kitchen floor.
Throughout her marriage my mother had few friends and only a handful of neighbors and coworkers to relate to. No one came over for dinner; no one sat down at our kitchen table to share a cup of tea. Her neat home, her family was all my mother had. I sit here wondering why my mother kept her house so clean when no one came over. My sister and I rarely made our beds and our clothes only occasionally reached the inside of our closet. My mother's frustration was always evident, but growing up we never matched her demands for neatness. The fact that my sister and I are both extremely tidy now is a miracle. Or is it?
© 2012
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