One day last month the Aunties came to visit.  Or maybe it was the month before.  It's so hard to remember these things these days.  Two of them live in southern Vermont, in Newfane, in an old restored farmhouse.  One of them lives in Boston, on Beacon Street.  But despite this difference in aesthetics, they all adhere to a strict policy of cleanliness that is hard to abjure.   I am sure, they have at times, hired a cleaning woman to come and have at the darker, more hidden recesses of the house.  But none-the-less, either house, at any moment - day or night, the morning after Thanksgiving or Chanukah eve - will be spotless.  Not a dust ball to be found roaming over the two hundred year old floorboards.  Not a spider web, curled in the picture window overlooking the Charles River.

So in preparation for the Aunties’ visit, I thought it wise to clean my house.  The house is new to me, despite being 166 years old.  There are quarter inch cracks between the wide pine floors in the parlor, and the walls, though thick and strong, bow out at such angles, they prompted a friend to ask if perhaps they were built like the flying buttresses to support the structure.  Not an easy house to clean, but not impossible.

I am not, by nature, a tidy girl.  I live amongst strewn clothes and heaped laundry baskets.  Dishes pile in the sink, rinsed at least, but awaiting true washing for another day, or another week.  Papers pile every surface, magazines splayed open to the story being read, sprawl across the bathroom and the bedroom floors.  The dog, taking my cue, leaves his dog bones and pieces of chewed wood and tennis balls in profusion on the rugs and sometimes leaves a buried chicken bone in the creases of the couch.  Flies litter the window sills, which I gather every other week, in a plastic tub to deliver to the happy chickens roaming the unmowed lawn out back.

My mother, shamed to this day by my slovenliness, has often bemoaned, in honest concern, that a messy house is a sign of disrespect for oneself.  A sign of depression.

I decide to take the imminent visit of the neat-nic aunts as an opportunity to clean up my act, once and for all.

I spend three entire days scouring every surface.  Sweep, vacuum, mop.  Wash, dry, fold, and - gasp - put away!  Dust, scrub, shuffle, discard, recycle, file, organize, dust again.  Strip beds, wash sheets, make beds, fluff pillows, beat rugs, trim garden paths.  And finally, gather some flowers and stuff them in a vase.

I've already bought the provisions for making coffee, a vise I don't engage in myself, and borrowed a wine opener for the bottle of wine that is sure to come.

I don't have but four plates and three bowls, and I drink out of ball jars.  But this deficit must wait to be addressed at another time.

The Aunties arrive.  They love my new house.  We drink wine.  And later, coffee.  They sleep in clean beds.  And then they leave.  They don't know the extraordinary effort I've gone to, because to them, this is how a normal person lives.  I am sure, even my best efforts fall far short of their worst nightmares.  But everyone is on good behavior, and the visit is deemed a success.

And now, my opportunity.  I am going to maintain this clean and tidy house, I decide.  I decide it is easier to simply put something away when I use it.  A place for everything, and everything in its place.  I will wash the dish after I eat, dry it, return it to the cupboard.  Clothes will be washed when the hamper is full, hung out to dry and put away.  The floor swept daily; a quick daily maintenance.  The dogs bones, returned at the end of each day, to his toy box in the kitchen.  The papers, recycled at once.  

And for a while, this seems to work.  Several days go by.  I do feel better.  Perhaps my mother was right.  I like the house clean.  And I decide I am committed to this new me.  I feel like an adult at last.  A real grown up.

And then life begins to happen again.  My play goes into production.  The deadlines increase in frequency and speed.  Papers must be written.  Telephone calls come flooding in.  Emails pile up.  It is an exciting, creative time.  I'm writing music, auditioning dancers, soliciting donations.  I fall into bed at the end of every day, exhausted, exhilarated.

I am committed to my dog, the cat, the chickens, the sheep and the bees.  Everyone gets walked, watered, fed, let out, let in, moved around - according to their needs.  

But little by little, the house gets away from me.

Scripts pile on the dining room table.  Audition forms and rewrite notes on the desk.  Foundation reports, bank determination letters, grant proposals on the kitchen tables.  Costume samples, the new piano arrives, donated gear piles in the entry way.

I barely have time to make a piece of toast, and the kitchen fills up again with dishes as I make a smoothie and dash for the door.  The floors are littered with hairballs and dog toys, and once again, a trail of clothes runs from laundry to bathroom to bedroom.  Coats and shoes heap up like there is a party going on, but I am the only human resident here.

But my mother was wrong.  I am not depressed.  I am gloriously happy.  Fulfilled.  Content.  I am living my passion, creating my dream.  And my house is a filthy, messy, disaster!

I have a friend whose kitchen floor you could literally eat off, and she is miserable in her life.  I have been in homes that looked like mausoleums, whose owners were sad, fatigued, living lives of quiet desperation.  Is the state of your home truly a reflection of the state of your mind?

My favorite second mom, lives in Denver, in a house full of animals and children that is always a mess.  And more than a mess, dirty.  Filthy.  The corners of the kitchen thick with grime, the bathrooms like a college frat house, the bedrooms, no joke, knee deep in clothes. And this house is full of more love and creativity and joy than any I have ever been to.  The mother, the children, all, in rock bands, dance companies, gymnastic competitions.  When I show up, they run down the stairs and throw their arms around my neck and shower me with love.  I don't think depression lives among the dirty clothes there.

And so I decided that modern convention, once again, isn't for me.  A clean house is well and good.  But any day, over that, I'll take a joyful, exciting, full and happy life.  Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind having both.  But so far, every day, it's a choice that must be made.  The house will have to wait until company comes again to visit.