A Road Less Travelled

James and Theresa were in Atlanta from Thursday to Saturday last week. I was home with six children. Now, you should understand that the five older children are all capable of being more help than they are bother. Not they always are, but they’re capable of it. All I really had to do was step up a little in my general awareness of what needed to be done around the house, make sure it got done while constantly maintaining an awareness of who was watching Margary, and make monumental efforts which only kind of worked not to get annoyed with the children over the odd noises they constantly make or the silly arguments I kept having to break up. How hard could that be?

About Friday afternoon I knew I could make it through until James and Theresa got back, but I was having serious doubts about my ability to do this for the rest of my life. I mean, this is what I’ve always planned to do with my life–stay-at-home mom, homeschool mom, homemaker… But somehow in my plans I was always better at it. I was only just getting done everything that needed to be done, and that was with five children who were big enough to help. I remembered in the morning that I needed to brush Elsie’s hair and finally got around to it at four in the afternoon. And that was doing pretty well with my time magangement–a lot better than I normally do when Theresa’s home. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to do this for the rest of my life; I was just pretty sure I’d never be able to handle it.

Saturday afternoon I realized that I’d just about made it through. I’d been the equivalent of a single mom of six children (though at least I didn’t have to have an outside job…) for three days, and I’d even kept the kitchen mostly clean. I learned once again that what I can or can’t do is irrelevant to what God calls me to do, because even when I can’t handle it He has it completely under control.

Now if I could just remember that for more than five seconds at a time….

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PURGE, v.t. purj. [L. purgo.]
1. To cleanse or purify by separating and carrying off whatever is impure, heterogeneous,foreign or superfluous; as, to purge the body by evacuation; to purge the Augean stable. It is followed by away, of, or off. We say, to purge away or to purge off filth, and to purge a liquor of its scum.Webster’s 1828 Dictionary online

Purge is a good word. For one thing, it’s fun to say. It has a good solid beginning, flows smoothly along, and suddenly cuts off with a sharp ‘j’ as if to say, “We’re done now–let’s not add any superfluous sounds at the end.

For another thing, it carries the satisfaction of streamlining one’s superfluous stuff much better than just ‘getting rid of’. I’ve gotten rid of stuff before. It’s a continual process of realizing that I have odd bits of things hanging around that I really don’t need anymore. This week, however, I have systemically purged my dresser and closet of each redundant, unused, disliked or otherwise superfluous article of clothing. For instance, I realized for the first time that I owned five pairs of black pants and two pairs of gray pants. Even I find seven pairs of black or gray pants to be excessive, and therefore decisively purged… um, one pair… Yeah. Really, though, I’m working on narrowing it down.

Actually, most of the purging process has gone quite well, and I have removed numerous bags of stuff from my room, to be whisked away to go clutter someone else’s–er, that is to say, be donated to some worthy recipients. In the process of eliminating the superfluous, I have discovered how very female I really am when it comes to collecting clothing and accessories. I got rid of some shoes, but yes, there really are ten pairs I use fairly regularly. (Augh! I’m one of the shoe people!) And I won’t even go into the number of headcoverings I own. (Okay, so I’m a particularly conservative brand of girly female.)

Next thing you know, someone’s going to claim I’m good at Egyptian shopping games, and I’ll completely lose my reputation of being a logical and rational type female…

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Last week sometime Crystal and I sat down with the kids and watched a documentary about early Colonial days in America that was made for children. All in all I thought it was a well made documentary and spoke to children well. Were it not for the glaring biases it would have been a fine documentary all around. Now, I know everybody has a bias and that therefore anything said or made will have the same bias as its creator. I know this and I knew that this documentary was most likely going to have a bias I did not agree with. But it did not have the bias I was expecting and the one it did have very much surprised me.

There were two bits that bothered me, though I’m only going to talk about one. It is so easy to misunderstand the Puritans (first by confusing them with the Pilgrims) and then make digs at them that I won’t even talk that bias. It is so over-done and this documentary didn’t say anything new. It was the bit that was talking about what life in Colonial Williamsburg looked like for children. First, the narrator talked about boys and how thy would often be apprenticed to a craftsman. Then she started talking about girls. And I quote “Girls were expected to stay home and learn how to sweep the house and sew… At least the boys learned a trade.”

This boggles my mind on a multitude of levels. First, if they really think that is all the girls were taught how to do they haven’t done enough research to make a documentary. Sweep and sew? Yes, I will agree that if that is all a girl is expected to know how to do that can be demeaning, but that is not at all what girls were taught to do. I wonder if people have contemplated what it took to make a meal completely from scratch. Sometimes if you wanted to eat today you needed to have started this food last week sometime. Depending on how good your general store is or how close you are to it if you want to sweep out your house you might be making the broom yourself. This isn’t including all the gardening, sewing, long-term food preparation or child rearing women had to do. “At least the boys learned a trade”? At least the girls learned five.

This bothers me on several different levels the main of which is that, for the most part, we are so entrenched in our own biases and modern issues that we take history and look at it through modern day lenses. Today most people believe that it is demeaning for a woman to stay home and care for her family and her home. So we look back in time and we say it was demeaning for those women to stay home and care for their families and their homes. But what would the makers of this documentary want the women to have done? Did they want them to go out and become blacksmiths? Did they want them to be out plowing the fields? Or would they rather the women pulled the plows when the horse was down? I don’t see these people understanding the fact that life was so different then than it is now that if there was not a woman in the home making sure things happened that family didn’t eat and that family didn’t have clothes. They couldn’t stop by the store on their way home from the fields and pick something up for dinner. So what is it so demeaning to be the heart and pivot of a home?

This rant has been sitting in the back of my head for a week or so, though I haven’t been very diligent to get to this computer and write it out. Honestly I haven’t had enough time in one place to feel I was doing it justice. I haven’t had enough time because I was reading to a sick child or making lunch for all the children or cleaning the house or adding a zipper to my pair of boots to make them more usable or doing something for Crystal so she could put together a logo for a small baking business we’re trying or any number of other tasks I do in a given day. And that doesn’t count anything I might have been reading or thinking about that was taking up thought space. There is far more to this life than just sweeping the house and sewing. I actually sometimes wish I had time to sew. And if anyone is going to try and tell me that I have not learned a trade then I challenge them to try this life out before they try and tell me what it’s like. No, I haven’t learned a trade. I’ve learned more than I could possibly pursue in my lifetime.

 

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Does anyone else have trouble coming up with titles for their blog posts?I just discovered that I posted this without a title and it’s been up for…well, for minutes! Shocking, isn’t it…

A few months ago we tore the house apart. In the process the girls got their own room and I got the room that used to be the study. Since I was moving all my stuff it seemed the ideal time to organize and arrange it properly.

A few days after I moved into the new room the Ben-Ezras came over to help move bunkbeds. I was showing Gabrielle all my books–finally unpacked and in one place. Seth stuck his head in and announced, “It’s a cute room.” What? You don’t understand, cute is next-door to girly, and I don’t go there. Excuse me, there’s even a sword hanging on the wall. When I pointed this out he declared the sword ‘cute’ as well, and thereafter when he was annoying Gabrielle I freely offered her the loan of my ‘cute sword’ to chase him around with.

Later I looked around my room and realized it is kind of girly. Not in a flowers and pink hearts kind of way–perhaps I should say it’s feminine. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s there from the tea bag wrapper I saved just because it’s pretty, to the origami cranes (or swans?) Gabrielle made out of bulletins, to the pictures stuck on my closet door, even to the sword hanging above my shelf made of wooden crates.

I find this intriguing because Gabrielle and I have discussions about what it means to be feminine, and we’ve never come up with a good definition. We can say what it’s not, but it’s really hard to hammer out details in way we could communicate to anyone else. But it seems that I am feminine even when I’m not trying. This doesn’t surprise me very much, but it does seem that if I can do it I should be able to explain it. But it doesn’t work that way. Some things are very hard to explain without demonstrating.

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I have been noticing a strange phenomenon cropping up in my manner of speaking. Lately I have found myself saying things like- “The other day we did such and such and I was worn out by the time it was done, but for reasons X, Y and Z it was worth it.” Or something like “We went here and we did that and I have yet to recover, but it was worth it.” I noticed this trend and I wondered at it. Why am I going out of my way to make sure I know and the person I am talking to knows that what I am doing is worth it? Why is that so important? As I have pondered this happening I think I have reached a conclusion. This life is hard and I am finally noticing.

That’s right, folks, I am just now noticing how difficult is this life I have chosen. It has finally penetrated deep into the back of my head that life is hard and my life especially. Yes, I know, I am dense. I have been doing this for a whole year; you would think I would have figured out that it is hard by now. But no, I am just now beginning to understand exactly what I have gotten myself into. It makes me think of a quote I found in a book -

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Earlier today Crystal and I were talking and she mentioned college. Arianna, who was lying on my lap, piped up and asked, “What’s college?” Oh, this made my little heart glow. This child of seven hadn’t even heard of college much less planned on attending one. We talked about college being good for some people and bad for others. She asked if college teaches women how to be homemakers and we said that it doesn’t. We talked about how when she gets older she will be doing the same sort of thing I am. It was so exciting to watch her face as she talked about helping women with small children. I was also amused when she said she would go to a woman’s house if the woman didn’t have an aunt and she needed to go grocery shopping. Arianna said she would watch the children while the woman went shopping just like I do. It was very humbling to see how much a role-model I am for this child. She and others are watching me and I am an older woman to them. I am glad for moments like this one that make the responsibility worth while.

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I love my mother’s hands. I don’t know what they look like right now, but I can’t imagine them any more perfect than they were before she went Home. Her hands were calloused and hard. Her nails were short and usually had dirt underneath them. Sometimes she would stroke my hand and her skin felt rough. And I think her hands are the most beautiful I’ve seen. They were hands that served, created, caressed and comforted. I think about what my hands do throughout the day and then I multiply that by the twenty-six years she was a mother. How many diapers did she change? How many meals did she make and serve? How many baskets did she weave? How many sweaters did she knit? The list goes on longer than I can see. And all of these acts wore down her hands and marked themselves on her skin. I remember her hands and I can still see them inside a turkey or kneading some bread or planting seeds. Her hands carried memories of everything she did for her family. And that made them beautiful.

I look at my hands and I wonder what memories they carry. I wonder if they are fruitful. I wonder if they have done anything worth while. I feel my palms and I feel they aren’t as soft as they once were. If I want to feel something fine I put it against my cheek because my hands are getting calloused and rough. My aunt was telling me ways to soften my hands and I told her I didn’t want to. I want my hands to get rough and calloused because maybe, maybe then they would be as beautiful as my mother’s were.

I made my mom cry once when I wrote her a letter on her birthday telling her how much I appreciated the fruitfulness of her hands. I told her I hoped one day to have hands as lovely as hers. I still hold that hope. And as I wash dishes and change diapers I pray that my hands would carry the memory of these acts. And I pray that after twenty-six years my hands would be as beautiful as my mommy’s are.

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Career : a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling

Career : What you plan to do for the rest of your life.

I was recently asked a question I found insightful. In one of the comments on this blog a friend asked Raquel and I if we were prepared for the fact that we might not get jobs in the occupation we are training for. It was a question I had thought of before, but not in the terms that it was stated. And the question got me thinking about jobs and careers.

What is a career? A career is something you want to do for the rest of your life. You invest time and money into training for it and you invest part of yourself into it and you become known to some extent by what your career is. My brother has said that he does not have a career. He has a job that he enjoys very much and puts time and energy into, but he does not think he will be doing that for the rest of his life. Crystal, on the other hand, has a career. She is a wife and she is a mother and these jobs affect her differently than being a husband and father affect Seth. Crystal has a career. She expects this phase of her career to end sometime, but it will really only adjust to her season of life. It will never end. At times I have almost envied Crystal because she is doing what she wants to do for the rest of her life. And I was only training for it. But that is very dangerous thinking.

What is training? Training is getting the skills necessary for what you want to do. Training looks down the road at something you want to do in the future. But I don’t want to live in the future. I don’t want to sink what could very well be years of my life only looking forward. That makes no sense. God didn’t put me here in Peoria just to get ready for my life to start. He put me here to work. I am not in training; I am on the job. I am starting on my career. I am starting on something I could do for the rest of my life. Now, I don’t really want to do this for the rest of my life. I want a job like Crystal’s. I pray to that end every day. But until then I will invest my time and myself into where I am. I will plan as if I do not know the time when this career will end (which isn’t too hard to pretend) and I will strive to be glad here. Otherwise, I will be close to useless. Starry-eyed dreamers are not very helpful when there are diapers to change. Planning out exactly how my wedding will look is not as helpful as reading a story to the children. Lovingly collecting recipes and dreaming about how pleased my husband will be when I serve these culinary delights is fruitless when Crystal needs help getting dinner on the table. God made the present time for a reason. It is to be lived in.

“This is your life. You will never find contentment in living for what you hope tomorrow may hold. Contentment is for today.” -Lydia Brownback, Fine China is For Single Women, Too

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