I Am A Domestic Goddess
I am ridiculously happy in the kitchen. Ri. Dic. U. Lous. Ly. Whenever I am lucky enough to be able to spend the day cooking and baking I have such great fun. But I also wish I had a husband and children to cook and bake for.
I think I want to be a housewife. Really, I do. What is a more important job than taking care of your family? I want to write and do documentary work as well, but I notice more and more how energetic and satisfied I feel when I’m in the kitchen coming up with tasty dishes.
Maybe my age has something to do with it, the fact that I am 37 years old, single with absolutely no prospects, and only have a few years left where I can have a baby. Clock is ticking! Maybe my dismal financial situation is also part of it, the fact that I am overeducated, underemployed, and embarrassingly paid for the work I do. I am humbled by the fact that I make just above minimum wage at two jobs that, combined, do not pay my bills, bills which do not include anything extravagant (unless you consider cable, internet, and a land line plus cell phone extravagant) and earnings which do not allow for any overpayments on credit cards or deposits to the savings account. I am more humbled by the fact that millions of Americans are trying to raise families on the same wages I use to support myself, and the fact that many Americans have no job at all.
What I am certain about is that I want to be a wife and mother. But I have realized that it is probably not meant to be. I am trying to not be sad about it, because as a friend pointed out to me today, I already take care of a lot of people. That is true. I love my family and I love my friends like they are blood, and I do my best to take care of everyone however I can. It’s a beautiful thing to share your love with those around you. I have a lot of passion, more than I can handle sometimes, and it would be lovely to have a husband and children of my own to share my life and love with. If that never happens, it means I am meant to find other ways to express my passion. I am not sure exactly how I am supposed to do that. Over the past year or so I have been thinking more than ever about getting married and starting a family. I can’t say that I have gone out of my way too much to try to meet anyone; I have had friends introduce me to two guys, neither of whom was remotely close to being my dream husband, though they were both pretty nice guys. I have no idea how to meet a straight man I can deal with. Where would I find such a man?
Part of what I think stops me from being more proactive despite claiming that all I really want is to get married and have babies, is the bad experiences I have had with guys in the past. I have been thinking a lot about these guys over the past few months since one of them passed away and I randomly saw another one a month before. I had not spent much time thinking about either one (or any of the others) recently because I was occupying my fantasies with my Ideal instead, thinking that I had moved past all the damage and pain these guys had caused. But seeing one and hearing that another had died made me revisit all the drama I had ever gone through over the men in my life. I guess I wasn’t as over it as I had thought. And that is not to say that I was not over them, because I certainly was, but the lingering effects of the horrible things that happened in those relationships had obviously had more of an impact on my daily life than I thought.
Aside from that, I have been thinking lately about why I have been so lazy about writing. I had all summer after graduation to write and work on lots of projects I did not have time for during graduate school. I took a break right after graduation, but then I got used to not having any obligations. I was slow to start looking for work. It was great to just be, to only have myself to answer to and to be able to spend more time with my family and friends. I would finally have time for husband-hunting and writing and relaxing! Well, I got plenty of rest and relaxation, but that was it. Why can’t I get motivated?
So what does this have to do with being a housewife? Housewives are not lazy, that’s for sure. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen this summer, lots of time reading cookbooks and watching the Food Network, lots of time thinking about the cookbooks I want to write. How many recipes did I write down? Well…
I enjoy doing things. I have always had fantasies about the kind of life I thought I would have someday, and I wrote lots of stories about that when I was younger. I thought I would be living those fantasies right now. Not so much. I am making less money now than I ever have (adjusted for inflation and such, of course), I am less motivated to do anything to achieve my goals, and I am more in need of focus than ever. Maybe my desire for housewifery is another escape like school was. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being in school. But it was partially an escape from the dreariness of the low-paying, unsatisfying jobs I found myself in year after year. But if I am happiest in the kitchen, cooking and creating and generally being a domestic goddess, and if little else in this world makes me feel that way (the only other thing I think I love equally is volunteering for charity organizations), isn’t that what I am meant to do?
