Domestic Goddess...I'm not!

It was 1976. I was 15 and my mom was wrong about everything. Especially the necessity of domestic skills. I knew about Ms. Magazine. I didn't read it, but I knew about it. I knew that cooking, sewing, and nurturing of husbands was passe and if I ever married, it would be to an incredibly enlightened man who cooked and did his own laundry. I didn't need those skills. Meanwhile, I read 16 Magazine and dreamed of the Bay City Rollers and Parker Stevenson.

Many years later I met my husband and he wooed me with a platter of brie cheese, red grapes and wine on our first date. At that time he did cook simple meals occasionally. Now, he cooks breakfast for us once a week after church. I gobble that up and it almost sustains me for another week. Unfortunately, our grill blew up at the beginning of last summer, so we are now going into a second summer with no grill. Summer grilling is all about E and he is all about summer grilling. It's his forte. I bow to his expertise, and am thrilled with the break in the monotony of my cooking. So, now I lust after a grill - any grill really. Even one of those George Foreman grills would work; as long as it is someone besides me doing the cooking. Alas, E wants a "good grill," so until we can work that into the ol' budget we are grill-less.

On the domestic front, our house basically looks like there has been an explosion of toys, clothes and shoes everyday. No matter how often I pick up things, there seems to be double and triple the mess as soon as my back is turned. I am continually overwhelmed by the loads of laundry that need doing and never seem to stop. If you were desperate, you could probably dine fairly well off the crud glued to the hardwood floor under our dining room table. I just...don't care enough about it. The bathroom is not as bad as some I've seen, but not exactly pristine shall we say. Whenever the kids drink their bath water I make the sign of the cross, hoping the germ vampires are not embedding themselves in their intestines.

The point, you ask? After numerous times beating myself up and looking around at chaos, I can't help but think... is it really that important? To have a clean house? I mean, it is wonderful when you have it and I envy many a friend of their clean homes, but...isn't the most important thing that I'm having fun with the kids? Well, at least on some days? I now admire those friends who sew, valuing their talents. Truthfully, I envy those with domestically inclined husbands. They tend to be a younger generation than mine and you see them everywhere, taking their kids to the park, cooking dinners, doing their own laundry. Hey that sounds like what women were aiming for in 1976! Maybe things have changed. Now if I could only find that issue of Ms. Magazine...

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