I’m angry with housework. I know anger is a waste of energy, but still I seethe and sigh. The kitchen counters and bedroom floors lie to me. “Clean us,” they say. “Just 20 minutes a day and you’ll have a tidy, happy home.” So I clean them. Only to find the bread bag stuck to the shelf in the fridge where something spilled two months ago, and the kids’ latest glue-paper-glitter project all over the dining room table and floor. “You’ll never catch up,” hiss the fridge and dining room. “You thought you could have a clean house, but you could clean 20 hours a week and your house would still look like this.” This isn’t fair. I’m darned if I do, and darned if I don’t.

After two weeks of cleaning more than usual, I have escaped to a coffee shop this morning because I can no longer stand my dirty house. I feel more than a little silly. After 11 years of mothering and 18 years of wife-ing, how am I at square one in housekeeping? The kids are in school full time, and I don’t work full time. Surely this is the golden age of housekeeping, the time of life where I wash the dishes and tidy the kitchen after supper, put away a pair of shoes, and straighten couch pillows on my way upstairs to put the kids to bed. Maybe I wash the windows every season, and clean grout in the bathroom. An insane little laugh escapes. What a crock, that picture, that dream.

Life is a mess. I’m angry my house doesn’t get a special exemption. Why does it have to be messy too? May I please control this one thing? I beg the Universe. It responds with cracker crumbs on the couch and cat hair in the corners.

What do I hope to find here at the coffee shop? It’s a cold morning, temperates in the 30’s for the first time this fall. I’m seated in a red vinyl chair with my laptop, and I’m the only customer under 60 years old, other than a little girl, maybe three years old, here with her grandparents. She never stops moving. She’s up on her chair, then down, now playing with a stuffed animal, now taking her grandma by the hand to look for the stuffed animal, which she has hidden. “Where did he go? Let’s keep looking,” she speaks in a strong, sweet, toddler voice. “Can we go to the park on the way home?” she asks. “It’s too cold,” says Grandpa. Why are adults always so practical?

Grandma strokes little-girl curls while Grandpa dresses the stuffed animal. Now they are getting ready to leave and the sweet sentences turn in to squeaky No!’s as Grandpa scoops the little one and takes her outside. How does this couple who must be 70 years old have the energy and patience to play hide-and-seek in a coffee shop and listen to endless chatter? How do they find the desire to follow around this busy little girl? Is it because they are grandparents and this ball of energy comes one hour at time? Or have they learned something about life that I have yet to learn, something I could apply to housekeeping?

No answers float to me through coffee-scented air. My feet are cold and I wish I had worn warmer shoes. Two men at a table near my seat are planning the HVAC and electricity for a home. One of them has a southern accent. The other has a shaved head and carries a man-purse that matches his gray-green coat. Their conversation is friendly, and turns to dog-fur trimming.

Movement outside the window alerts me to the flight of a heron above the business strip. Its steady, quiet flight calms me. I pause and sip my hot mocha. Maybe everything is okay, even though everything is not okay. I will go back to my messy house and I will not have a solution. No schedule, no discipline, and no amount of bribing or shouting at my children will produce a clean house. We do live there, after all. No one lives here at the coffee shop. Most folks have come to visit with someone they like, love, or work with. It’s nice to visit in a clean place, with a ready-made hot drink.

But I don’t want to live here. I want to live at home, with my favorite, messy people. I want my girls to be creative, even if it means scissors all over the house and cut up cotton swabs on the bathroom counter. I want my family to eat well, even if it means dirty counters and sticky floors and an overstuffed fridge. I want to provide clean clothes, even if it means piles of unfolded laundry on the couch, mixed with popcorn remnants from movie night. I want to clean dried water spots off the wall beside the bathroom sink, even though no one will notice. I want to have two cats and a rabbit, even though the house would be easier to clean without them.

I want all this, but I’m scared. If this season of life is the ideal situation for keeping a clean house, and every room is a mess, does the dream have to die? I can’t blame this dirty house on full-time work, or full-time parenting. There’s nothing left. I just don’t keep a clean house. I have friends with social lives, kids, and clean houses. But that is not my lot. Some friends have spouses who like things clean and tidy, and participate in daily routines that promote cleanliness. Mine doesn’t.

I will kill this dream before it kills me. I cannot argue with it any more. I will not abide its mocking, and I will not let it speak to me from stained toilet bowls and dusty windowsills. I may curse when my slippers stick to the kitchen floor, but I will also chuckle. I will find my way to a healthy relationship with my messy house because I want this for myself and for my family.

The average customer age in the coffee shop has gone down. A handsome man maybe a decade older than me asks if he can sit in the red vinyl chair on the other side of the table from mine. Three casually dressed men in athletic shoes assemble at the counter to order, while another group of four young guys enters the shop. Now there are a dozen male patrons and only three of us ladies. I wonder, what is it like to be on the lookout for new relationships with men? Is this coffee shop a good place to strike up a conversation? Does a different type do it here than the type who do it at bars? It occurs to me this is one area in which I am content. My husband is a ten and I have no interest in hooking up with anyone else. In fact, although Michael isn’t bothered enough by our untidy home to do much cleaning, he has taken to making the bed in the morning, for me. I love that. I love him. And damn, how lucky I am to be stressed about my house and not my marriage.

I guess I have found something here at the coffee shop. I have recaptured a modicum of gratitude. I have remembered that I am not a victim. I have received the calm of the Great Blue Heron, and the pleasure of writing in a clean space that is not my responsibility.

Two women in their forties are at the counter now, and three ladies with coiffed hair come in behind them. Gender balance is restored in the coffee shop, and goodwill is restored in me.