Domestic Goddess

I was recently with another woman who has a completely different skill set from me, and I found myself comparing the two of us, and wondering whether I measured up. I like doing comparisons like this, because it helps me remember where I want to be, find a new way to go, or congratulate myself on what I'm doing. It also occasionally makes me feel like a failure.

The funny thing about this particular comparison is that it brought up thoughts I have regarding some of best friends as well. I started thinking that maybe I could only feel truly that I had become a domestic goddess when I regularly did almost everything each of these woman do. The list got pretty hilarious the longer I thought about it, and I encouraged my friends to chime in when they had something to add to the list.

So, here's my list; add your own items in the comment section if you feel I've overlooked something.

1. Homeschool.
2. Growing at least 50% of the food a family eats.
3. A tidy, presentable house at all times.
4. A bathroom your mother wouldn't mind using.
5. Each child always  having a homemade item to don.
6. Fresh, matching pajamas at bedtime for the children.
7. A well brushed dog.
8. A garden that's a delight to walk through.
9. Chickens are a must.
10. The chicken coop must be pristine- especially the nest boxes.
11. The chickens must USE the nest boxes if you're really a domestic goddess.
12. A pantry full of home canned and lactofermented goodness.
13. Fresh baked something every day.
14. Every meal must be a peaceful occasion. 
15. No sandwiches- unless all sandwich items were lovingly prepared by you.
16. Domestic goddesses do not have to own or shear sheep, but from roving to sweater, they must know the way.
17. Each family member must have a sweater from your labors.
18. Your yard must be beautiful.
19. The children's rooms must be inviting.
20. Daily mopping.
21. Homemade yogurt.
22. A happy spouse.
23. An empty laundry room due to all the laundry being ever clean and put away.
24. A calm answer to every child who ever makes any request.
25. Always ready.

Feminism

I remember being about eight when we were once driving home from church, my mother seething. This happened pretty often, and we three children sat silently, wondering which of us had misbehaved so badly during the service that she felt she had to drag us out of church. She took a deep breath and began to talk to us about what women do.

Her voice shook as she explained exactly why she worked. She told us how she was not happy staying home; she elaborated on how difficult it had been when my brother and I, only one year apart, were babies and my father spent so much time working. She mentioned other families in the church in which the mothers did stay home, and how for some of them, it worked well, and for others, the women simply suffered and looked gray. She talked all the way home, trying to make us understand how no one answer works for every woman, and how women need each other. She wanted us to understand that the women who stayed home were not the enemies of the women who worked, but they were all the same people trying to find the best solutions for their families.

I also remember my mother often saying how she would crawl into a warm bath with a razor blade if she ever found out she was pregnant again- not a coat hanger mind you, but a razor blade.

There's a Breeders song that goes, "Saw it on a wall, motherhood means mental freeze. Freezeheads!", and I wonder about the neighbor ladies I knew as I got older.  Her best friend was a mess and not our neighbor, but she was like my mother. They could talk for hours about entertainment esoterica or the Hapsburgs or czarist Russia. My mother only saw her a couple of times a year, but she's the only woman, besides my aunt, I remember my mother spending quality time with. Those neighbor ladies watched soap operas and and seemed rundown by their lives. Maybe my mother was fleeing that as much as her three demanding children.

I remember sitting beside my mother in the car one morning when she had taken a day off from work; she was a little sick, but really, she had planned a day just puttering around the house. Between her commute and her handicap, she was too tired at the end of most days to tackle housework, and weekends were not long enough for any real project. Mostly, our house was pretty filthy, but occasionally, she would take a day and deal with some area or another. This particular day, I turned up sick as well. We had just dropped my siblings off at school, and she was headed back home. She said, "I know you're not all that sick, but I figured you needed the day with me."

And there it is; I just needed my mother.

I stay at home because I wanted her so badly. Staying at home has increased my questioning of what I was taught about feminism. I think my mother's speech in the car that morning defines what I believe. I like to think more women know this now--we cannot have it all, and we've given up trying. We know we have to pick.

Her generation also shook the foundations of authority, giving me the breathing room to figure some things out for myself. While she believed fully in experts, she somehow instilled a mile-wide streak of doubt in her children.

That doubt led our family to homebirth and nursing and cloth diapers, things many in her generation had really moved away from. It led to home schooling and homesteading. My life is probably pretty far removed from what my mother might have imagined for me; she might have chastised me for wasting opportunities her generation fought for. Still, I know she believed what she told us in that car that long ago Sunday. I know someone had deeply hurt her for what she had decided was best for our whole family, and I know she would understand that my decision might not look the same but is based on that exact foundation.

Playing Dolls

Ezra had no interest in dolls until Phaedra was big enough to play with them. For those of you who are tutting at all our culture does to deny boys this beautiful expression of caring for ourselves and learning to nurture, trust that Ezra had plenty of opportunities and gentle encouragement to play dolls. Sure, there were occasional forays; I have a sweet picture of him when he was almost three nursing a baby doll in a sling fashioned from a play silk. I think this had more to do with imitation than with playing at nurturing, because it never seemed to develop into the same sort of play that his backyard engineering feats did.

Phaedra chose to sleep with a doll around the time she turned two, and this doll still resides in her bed, with a threadbare face and mittened hands. But sleeping with a dolls and playing dolls are not really the same. I had hoped she would play dolls, and Ezra would join her, and they could both try their hands at nurturing. There was some doll play, but it never seemed to grab either of them. They spent more time telling stories and swinging and building with blocks. Phaedra definitely likes dolls, but she does less pretending with them, and more maintenance, like making clothes and smoothing hair.

Now, Sylvie really plays dolls. She dresses them and carries them places and worries sporadically about their feelings. She always hopes someone will be fooled that she's carrying a real baby.  She cajoles Ezra and Phaedra to play with her, and she always wants them to play dolls. Sylvie is the one that keeps a storyline going, so that everyone will just stick to dolls.

The problem is that Ezra is the most likely to say yes, and his babies are always so poorly behaved. To me, it looks like doll rebellion. His dolls always wake the others from their naps; they refuse to be potty trained or dressed nicely. They pinch the other babies to make them cry. Sylvie announced that Ezra is banished from doll play until his dolls can act right. (I love this stuff!)

So, the other day, Ezra is quietly and pointedly crying behind me as I'm washing dishes, and I ask the question he's silently begging me to ask, "What's the matter?"

His tears fall faster as he explains that Sylvie is excluding him. I look out the window and see the girls playing peacefully; I reflect on all I know about my plastic grandchildren; I ask Ezra if he knows why he's being excluded.

There's a powwow and then,

This lasted a solid hour. I always wonder when this moment will be the last like this I'll see.

A Flexible Schedule

I homeschool the children in a way that means I rarely get a week day off during the school year, so I'm pretty tied up with them until after lunch Monday through Friday. Then, five afternoons a week, we have enrichment activities. This works for us, except for one thing.

I still have a million things to do outdoors. I actually plan the work load to be heavier between now and March, so that I can have more time to begin gardening. Fall sneaked up on us this year; Jason has been so busy with one thing and another, that he has not taken up the slack the way I have come to count on. Some things were outright errors, like I planted green beans so late that they were only barely coming on when we started school.

Fortunately, I have learned a bit of flexibility through the years, and the newest contortion is that Monday is not a "real" school day until probably snowfall.

The children handled it pretty well yesterday. Ezra is quite independent in his studies, relying on me primarily to follow up on readings or edit writing. Phaedra likes to have me in the neighborhood when she does math, but she managed with only a little nudging from Ezra. Sylvie did only a few things, as she still relies heavily on me to provide structure to her school day; still, she can have a few four-day-weeks in second grade.

I delighted in pulling up the eight-foot tall pole beans that hung dead and slimy from frost. I raked leaves and raked leaves and raked leaves. Do you have any idea how many leaves it takes to fill a 50' by 3' path? I only filled one of them, but I did hit some trouble spots around the ends of rows with cardboard and leaves. I layered hay onto three green bean beds, as well as the cucumber and chard beds. It doesn't sound like much, I know, but it took 6 hours. And I haven't even started on the new garden.

Teaching Manners

Jason and I enjoy new ideas. We like experiments; we're not too afraid of failing. The notion that making mistakes quickly is a good way to a workable solution appeals to us. The upside is we almost always have something to talk about; the downside is we make lots of mistakes. Parenting has offered many avenues for making humbling mistakes.

Before we had children, before I started teaching, I read many books on child development. The theories I happened onto that made a lot of sense to me were more of the "adults must stay out of the way of the natural goodness of children" or "children will do all the things they need to do naturally if we give them the space". Two months into teaching, I was already doubting these theories. Given complete freedom, most of the children in the school where I taught preferred playing and socializing to academic pursuits. Non-violent communication did not beget non-violence among the students who liked to express themselves physically. For the ones who liked talking more than math, the "peace corner" was a perfect place to spend the morning. There seemed no natural leanings toward watching out for less able, younger, or confused peers.

The thing with theories is they sound so good on paper, and you can always find someone who has the experience to back up one theory or another. So, if you're already biased, you're pretty likely to believe the supporting arguments. There is nothing like personal encounters to blow theories out of the water.

Ezra did not sleep when he needed to; it seems his little baby and child self benefited from an adult facilitating sleep- even when he was three and four and twelve. The girls definitely followed a similar pattern. Letting a small Ezra or Phaedra or Sylvie experience the cold due to their inadequate clothing choices proved to be another asinine theory. Each of them might have blue lips and chittering teeth as they claimed they were not cold and, "No, I don't want a jacket, shoes, shirt...."

Admittedly, some things worked. I do not cajole the children to eat; I've never begged them. I have occasionally insisted on one bite. I think I have pretty good eaters with very few table tantrums on the books. Their table manners still need work.

And manners is what this post is supposed to be about.

Along with the idea that they would sleep when they needed to and ask for a coat if they got cold, was the idea that if we modeled good manners they would copy us. I cannot even count how many times I read on the Mothering boards some scathing comment about a mother who made her three-year-old say please, thank you, I'm sorry, excuse me. Why! If that mother only knew how she was scarring her child into hating manners and how much more gently she could do it by simply providing a good example. If everyone would do this there would be peace in the Middle East!

Here I sit with three children who have heard me say please and thank you, hello and good bye, excuse me, welcome!, and so on and not a one of them has developed the habit. I'm surrounded by just those sort of haters who MADE their dear little toddlers mouth these meaningless words and phrases until it became habit- and the fact is their children are much nicer to be around.

All these little habits are more easily impressed on little ones, and for them, they are most likely meaningless. But I'm one person who feels delighted when a visiting child says, "Thank you for having me over." I wish I had seen the foolishness of omitting this bit of direct teaching.

So now, I'm having to teach and explain that these little words are just to make people feel better and they are the oil in the social bearings. I'm having to whisper cues in the ears of children old enough to be embarrassed by promptings. We have to review social niceties before we go into a store or a lesson- things like "make eye contact, say thank you, always yield right of way to pregnant women and elderly people". Maybe these are not the same rules you would enforce; maybe my children will talk to their therapists about the year their mother got manners; maybe no one else actually cares afterall. And still, all I can think is that it's about time.

"Manners"

for a child of 1918
by Elizabeth Bishop

My grandfather said to me
as we sat on the wagon seat,
"Be sure to remember to always
speak to everyone you meet."

We met a stranger on foot.
My grandfather's whip tap his hat. 
"Good day, sir. Good day. A fine day."
And I said it and bowed where I sat.

Then we overtook a boy we knew
with his big pet crow on his shoulder.
"Always offer everyone a ride;
don't forget that when you get older,"

my grandfather said. So Willy
climbed up with us, but the crow
gave a "Caw!" and flew off. I was worried.
How would he know where to go?

But he flew a little way at a time
from fence post to fence post, ahead;
and when Willy whistled, he answered.
"A fine bird, " my grandfather said,

"and he's well brought up. See, he answers
nicely when he's spoken to.
Man or beast, that's good manners.
Be sure that you both always do."

When the automobiles went by,
the dust hid the people's faces,
but we shouted "Good day! Good day!
Fine day!" at the top of our voices.

When we came to Hustler HIll,
he said that the mare was tired,
so we all got down and walked,
as our good manners required.

What Happened at Our House Today

Maybe I'll get used to this, but I have my doubts. Here in early October, we had some strange, but not unheard of, weather. That white stuff is not hail, but very fat balls of sleet. It felt decidedly winter-ish, or late fall-ish, with the wind blowing and much frozen white stuff falling.

Like Texas (in January or February), it all melted pretty quickly, like when there would be twenty minutes of blazing sun between the intervals of blowing sleet and snow. I was delighted, and awed, and mystified.

I looked at the children on this mid-October day and said for the millionth time, "I do not believe we're in Texas anymore."