Stocking feet

At the neighbors, standing in their kitchen wearing my best woolen socks, I couldn't take my gaze from the baseboards.

The sparkling white of the elegant, curved moldings looked freshly painted. It reflected off the dark hardwood floor as if it were a stately birch gazing into a deep pool of still water.

There was not a spec of dirt or a smudge of grime anywhere.

"A person could eat off these floors," I may have said a little too loudly as I carried a plate to the dining table.

Cloth napkins and jute placemats, of course.

On the spur of the moment, our neighbors had invited us to dinner.

Nothing fancy, they said. Just a one-pot meal with friends. "Just bring yourselves."

Despite the spontaneous invitation, their house was at its company-is-coming best. And their meal – unlike most of ours – didn't come from combining three separate packets using the directions printed on the one box.

This is usually the time when a person, overhearing me describe the less-than-magazine-layout-ready condition of our place, would try to insert the soothing balm of messy homes somehow equating to fuller lives being lived.

Or how busy schedules don't make for fancy and opportune meals.

And anyway … who has the time?

"People who put feeding their families above playing just one more game of Words with Friends?"

I'm not envious. Though I can't say, I'm entirely comfortable mentally comparing this home from the one we've haphazardly made next door.

My kids - having been roused from their rooms, where they might have taken whatever foodstuffs they'd scrounged on their own - sat awkwardly at an unfamiliar table. Their elbows in limbo, realizing the corners of arms, don't belong on tabletops but not knowing how to suspend them for comfort. Can they sustain them sans support for the duration of dinner through dessert? I could tell from the way they held themselves akimbo that was the biggest question on their limb quivering minds.

They had already taken only small portions as protection against having to feign genuine affection rather than modest appreciation.

I feel a surge of love as I look over at my kids, who are trying earnestly to fit in, as if they haven't just come from alien territory next door, where their pet dust bunnies have pet dust bunnies.

I was not blessed with the so-called "nesting gene," according to pretty much anyone who has ever come to my house unannounced. Any deadline has a direct correlation to the amount of time we allot to the work required to meet said deadline. Why is it that we say such things are nesting impulses? I have never experienced a hormonal shift that made me predisposed to clean up after my husband … or the kids … each of whom will usually trail mud through the kitchen the moment I've mopped.

I'm just the only one who will get sick of looking at the piles of dishes and laundry on a semi-regular basis.

Sure … I might have to be a different person altogether to manage a house as if it were a well-oiled machine. But I can't say it's not inspiring to know the picture-perfect can exist in the same space that includes kids, and dogs, and neighbors who may need reminding to remove their shoes.