The Ecclesiastes of Housekeeping

A riff on Ecclesiastes 1:2-11.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Mother.
“Utterly meaningless!
All this work is meaningless.”

What does a mother gain from all her labor under her roof?
One child goes off to school and one child remains home,
Yet lunch-making endures forever.
The dirty dishes rise in the sink, and the dirty dishes recede,
Yet they always hasten back to the stack, in need of scrubbing once more.
The dust settles on furniture and floor
Before it kicks up into the air;
Round and around it goes,
Whirling constantly throughout the house.
Dirty laundry spins in the machine,
Yet the mound of clothing never ceases.
From the place those grass-stained t-shirts came,
They will return to the pile again .
All the housework is wearisome,
More than a woman can say.
The eye always spots something out of place,
The ear always hears a dripping sink.

Nothing will change, it will all be the same,
It will all need doing again and again;
And there are no new gadgets that lighten the load.
Is there any invention of which it can be said:
“Look! Here is a new sponge”?
That sponge is the same as long ago;
Our mothers used it before our time.
There will be no end to the continual scrubbing.
Even our great-grandchildren will toil away.
And it will still be utterly meaningless!