This is what my husband wrote about his experience. Thought I would share it, too:
On Saturday evening August 26, I was in the Lexington, Kentucky airport returning to Atlanta. My fellow travelers and I learned our flight, the last one out, was cancelled. We were given a choice of 6:00 am of 9:00 am flights the next morning. I wanted to hurry home to see my family, but I hesitated and decided on the later, 9:00 am flight. As I arrived the next morning, I was denied entry to the terminal by what was an unexpected and alarming number of emergency personnel. Then the news--the 6:00 am flight was Delta-Comair 5191 that crashed upon takeoff killing 49 onboard.
Thinking back, had this been a business day, I normally would have taken the early flight. I then remembered the man in line ahead of me who asked for the 6:00 am ticket--he lost his life. I didn’t know his name, but I remember his face. All day Sunday, it really didn’t sink in. But over the two days since, I’ve gone over it a thousand times. What would have been? My last conversation with my spouse the night before would have been a silly discussion about movies we wanted to see. I would not have seen her or my son again. I would not have seen the birth of my second child expected in December. Who would care for my mother who is ill, I thought?
I came to the realization this week that we can only tangibly affect the present. Sure, we can strive to do good work, choose to raise children and instill ideals that might outlive us into the future. But, it’s really the day to day life, the present tense where have the most impact. What would your last conversation of Saturday August 26 have been about? What would your actions on that day been spent toward?
I am not overjoyed. I am thankful for the days I have had since Saturday, but I am very sad for those who lost their lives, many due to a simple choice of two plane tickets. In honor of those lost in the crash, I would challenge each of us to consider every moment more carefully. We should choose more carefully the way we treat others and speak to them, just in case those are the last words and actions we’re remembered by. We should strive to contribute work in the office and in the community that has lasting quality. We should try to be a positive influence on others. If we do these things, no matter how many days each of us has on Earth, they will add up to a life worth living.
When I read this for the first time, I had no idea the guy ahead of him chose the 6:00 flight. Gave me chills to read it.
A few friends and family have mentioned to us that God spared Moon's life for a reason, that there is an unfulfilled purpose in Moon's life, something he must do, and this was made more obvious when his life was spared.
While I certainly don't believe in random fate pushing us all about the stage of life like so many dust bunnies swept up by some clown with a cosmic broom, I wonder about that statement. I wonder if the fact that he's here with the living today and the guy ahead of him in line is not means more than that. Surely my husband wasn't the only one in line God was looking out for, or the only one God cared about. Surely my husband wasn't the only one with unfulfilled dreams and purpose standing in that line at the airport, trying to get home to Atlanta.
One of my personal catchphrases over the past few years has become "life sucks, but God is good". In this world, people die too young and too soon. Bad things happen to good people. Bad people get away with doing horrible things. There is no perfection, no utopia, no protection from the reality of evil and good co-existing side by side. It is why, like Saint Augustine, I believe "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God". It is why I believe in Heaven.
Maybe my husband's life was spared because there is some great unfulfilled plan for him that still must unfold. Or maybe it was just not his day to die. Ultimately, I think he sums it up well in his assessment of the whole thing--we can only tangibly affect the present. This minute is really all we have. I read a quote yesterday from Lawrence Scupoli from his work The Spiritual Combat: "God has granted you the morning, but he does not promise the evening. Spend each day as if it were your last."
What would our lives look like if we really took that to heart? How would I live this day differently if I thought it were my last?
This day. This minute. It's really all I know I have.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
A little brush with mortality...
This past Saturday, my husband had a 50-50 chance of survival. No joke. And I was completely oblivious.
Here's the deal:
He flew down Friday to Lexington, KY to help his sister get settled in her new digs there, with plans to fly back Saturday night. I was okay with this, although not thoroughly thrilled--I am NOT a fan of spending nights alone, mainly because I'm ridiculously afraid of the dark for a thirtysomething mother. But it was cool. I had Monk and Psychic to get me through the darker hours before bedtime, and a new mystery novel. Of course, Max chooses this particular weekend to come down with a mysterious virus complete with fever and vomiting and staying awake all night, but that, I've learned, is part of the Murphy's Law of mothering--the worst events with your children will occur when you are sans spouse.
So Friday night passes in a haze of USA Network programming, whodunits and vomit cleaning. I survived.
Then Moon, my spousal unit, calls me Saturday evening around the time he should be boarding his plane and tells me that due to a plane malfunction his flight has been canceled and he has to reschedule for the next morning. He was offered a choice of the 6:00 or 9:00 flight back. He chose 9:00AM.
I was not a happy camper, as I now faced another night alone with a sick baby and a raging case of cabin fever from having been locked in the house all day with said sick baby. But this is life, and I must deal. Sunday it is.
"I'll see you around 12:30 or so," he tells me.
Max and I spent another sleepless night, broken only by a 2-hour respite he offered me while he slept through my watching of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle on cable TV. (yeah, yeah, yeah, make fun if you wish, but sleep deprivation and intellectually stimulating movies do not mix.) I am REALLY looking forward to Moon's homecoming, if only for the chance of sleep it might provide.
At 7:00AM Sunday morning, he calls me again.
"Hey," he says, "are you watching the news?"
"No, I'm watching Dora the Explorer with Max while brain cells trickle out of my ears," I tell him. I am running on about 2 hours sleep total, and my hugely pregnant state does not allow me to consume massive amounts of caffeine to compensate. As a result, I am not in the best of moods.
"Well, I won't make my flight. There's been a crash and the airport's closed."
"WHAT???" I said, stupidly.
"That's all I know," he said. "Except that I think the plane that crashed was the plane I was supposed to be on at 9:00."
The impact of all this didn't hit until around 9:30, when the news networks picked up the story and every major Atlanta channel was carrying the story of Comair Flight 5191. My knees went rubbery as I sat there watching the whole story unfold--the crash itself, the fact that all but one person on the flight died. One of the passengers was a dad who had been visiting family in Lexington and took the earlier flight because he wanted to see his kids. Moon came within a hair's breadth of being on that plane. "Do you want the 6:00 or the 9:00 flight?" he'd been asked, and had a 50-50 chance of living or dying in the answer he gave.
When he finally got home around 7PM that night, I was never so glad to see him.
It's funny how quickly our life settled back into the grooves of, well, life--you think that when you brush against death's veil that closely you would take some time to ponder the whole profundity of the thing. But by now Max was recovering from his virus, and had his own case of severe cabin fever that he exhibited by screaming at the top of his lungs and running around the house in circles like a rabid dog. One of our cats had been bitten by a spider the night before and had to be taken to the kitty ER because the allergic response to the spider bite was causing it to try and scratch its face off, and he was getting blood all over my carpet. One of us had to take dinner over to a sick family member. We were out of diapers. That sort of thing. Life just shoved itself into the cracks too quickly to allow us to ponder the cracks in the first place.
I thanked God, of course, but it was a weird sort of thank you. How do you say thanks for the preservation of one life in the midst of the loss of 49 others? "Thanks that such a horrible thing didn't happen to us" seems a selfish sort of prayer. I'm profoundly grateful my husband will get to see the face of his unborn child, which he almost didn't. But what of the newlywed couple just starting a brand new life who were on that plane?
So, I'm grateful and sad and relieved all at the same time. Death seems to have been dogging our family for a few years now with the loss of both of my grandparents and Moon's dad, so it's nice to see us get bypassed this time, even if I'm still reeling a bit from the way the Grim Reaper's black robes brushed a little too closely against my husband's ankles. And as in-your-face a reminder as it was, it was still a reminder that after 11 years, I am still crazy about my husband, and have no idea how to even contemplate a full life without him.
So here we are on Tuesday, all of us still alive, Max fully recovered, cat in one of those awful conehead things and healing, Moon back at work, me blogging, fetus kicking the snot out of me, diapers bought, life moving on. Our biggest concern today is who we can get to babysit Max this Thursday while we go to an Earth, Wind and Fire concert (not my first choice, but the tix are free and Moon is a huge 70s music fan. I would have preferred the recent John Prine/Patty Griffin show, but that is neither here nor there). But somewhere out there are 49 families whose lives have been totally blown apart, and my heart and prayers are still with them, because I came this close to joining their ranks. If you get a chance today, you might want to offer up a prayer/good thought as well. The Valley of the Shadow of Death is a pretty horrible place to be.
Here's the deal:
He flew down Friday to Lexington, KY to help his sister get settled in her new digs there, with plans to fly back Saturday night. I was okay with this, although not thoroughly thrilled--I am NOT a fan of spending nights alone, mainly because I'm ridiculously afraid of the dark for a thirtysomething mother. But it was cool. I had Monk and Psychic to get me through the darker hours before bedtime, and a new mystery novel. Of course, Max chooses this particular weekend to come down with a mysterious virus complete with fever and vomiting and staying awake all night, but that, I've learned, is part of the Murphy's Law of mothering--the worst events with your children will occur when you are sans spouse.
So Friday night passes in a haze of USA Network programming, whodunits and vomit cleaning. I survived.
Then Moon, my spousal unit, calls me Saturday evening around the time he should be boarding his plane and tells me that due to a plane malfunction his flight has been canceled and he has to reschedule for the next morning. He was offered a choice of the 6:00 or 9:00 flight back. He chose 9:00AM.
I was not a happy camper, as I now faced another night alone with a sick baby and a raging case of cabin fever from having been locked in the house all day with said sick baby. But this is life, and I must deal. Sunday it is.
"I'll see you around 12:30 or so," he tells me.
Max and I spent another sleepless night, broken only by a 2-hour respite he offered me while he slept through my watching of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle on cable TV. (yeah, yeah, yeah, make fun if you wish, but sleep deprivation and intellectually stimulating movies do not mix.) I am REALLY looking forward to Moon's homecoming, if only for the chance of sleep it might provide.
At 7:00AM Sunday morning, he calls me again.
"Hey," he says, "are you watching the news?"
"No, I'm watching Dora the Explorer with Max while brain cells trickle out of my ears," I tell him. I am running on about 2 hours sleep total, and my hugely pregnant state does not allow me to consume massive amounts of caffeine to compensate. As a result, I am not in the best of moods.
"Well, I won't make my flight. There's been a crash and the airport's closed."
"WHAT???" I said, stupidly.
"That's all I know," he said. "Except that I think the plane that crashed was the plane I was supposed to be on at 9:00."
The impact of all this didn't hit until around 9:30, when the news networks picked up the story and every major Atlanta channel was carrying the story of Comair Flight 5191. My knees went rubbery as I sat there watching the whole story unfold--the crash itself, the fact that all but one person on the flight died. One of the passengers was a dad who had been visiting family in Lexington and took the earlier flight because he wanted to see his kids. Moon came within a hair's breadth of being on that plane. "Do you want the 6:00 or the 9:00 flight?" he'd been asked, and had a 50-50 chance of living or dying in the answer he gave.
When he finally got home around 7PM that night, I was never so glad to see him.
It's funny how quickly our life settled back into the grooves of, well, life--you think that when you brush against death's veil that closely you would take some time to ponder the whole profundity of the thing. But by now Max was recovering from his virus, and had his own case of severe cabin fever that he exhibited by screaming at the top of his lungs and running around the house in circles like a rabid dog. One of our cats had been bitten by a spider the night before and had to be taken to the kitty ER because the allergic response to the spider bite was causing it to try and scratch its face off, and he was getting blood all over my carpet. One of us had to take dinner over to a sick family member. We were out of diapers. That sort of thing. Life just shoved itself into the cracks too quickly to allow us to ponder the cracks in the first place.
I thanked God, of course, but it was a weird sort of thank you. How do you say thanks for the preservation of one life in the midst of the loss of 49 others? "Thanks that such a horrible thing didn't happen to us" seems a selfish sort of prayer. I'm profoundly grateful my husband will get to see the face of his unborn child, which he almost didn't. But what of the newlywed couple just starting a brand new life who were on that plane?
So, I'm grateful and sad and relieved all at the same time. Death seems to have been dogging our family for a few years now with the loss of both of my grandparents and Moon's dad, so it's nice to see us get bypassed this time, even if I'm still reeling a bit from the way the Grim Reaper's black robes brushed a little too closely against my husband's ankles. And as in-your-face a reminder as it was, it was still a reminder that after 11 years, I am still crazy about my husband, and have no idea how to even contemplate a full life without him.
So here we are on Tuesday, all of us still alive, Max fully recovered, cat in one of those awful conehead things and healing, Moon back at work, me blogging, fetus kicking the snot out of me, diapers bought, life moving on. Our biggest concern today is who we can get to babysit Max this Thursday while we go to an Earth, Wind and Fire concert (not my first choice, but the tix are free and Moon is a huge 70s music fan. I would have preferred the recent John Prine/Patty Griffin show, but that is neither here nor there). But somewhere out there are 49 families whose lives have been totally blown apart, and my heart and prayers are still with them, because I came this close to joining their ranks. If you get a chance today, you might want to offer up a prayer/good thought as well. The Valley of the Shadow of Death is a pretty horrible place to be.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Confessions of a Housewife
Just checked to see when I last posted something--over a month ago. Who was it that said "life is what happens when you're making other plans"? I'm finding that particularly apt right now.
Since my last posting, there's been a lot of life--tinged with the shadow of death--around here. My baby boy turned three years old. Some close family family members are moving to start a new chapter of their life in Kentucky. My sister-in-law is dealing with a cancer diagnosis just passed down to her mother. A close member of our extended family (who, being proud and disinclined to enjoy having minutae about his/her life paraded across the Internet, shall remain nameless) is sick, very sick. We've been doing a lot of caregiving over the past month, wondering what the final out come of all this sickness will be. It's been reminding me of the vigils we kept last year at my father-in-law's bedside just before he passed away, and the time my grandfather lived with my husband and me after my grandmother passed on.
Caregiving. It seems to come with the territory of family, those who are bound to you through blood and marriage. At least, that's how it's seemed in my life. I've been spending a lot of time this past month babysitting so other relatives can visit at the hospital, preparing meals, running errands. Doesn't leave a lot of time to write.
The thing about being a stay-at-home mother/housewife in this day and age is that, well, we're a bit of a dying breed. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of underscheduled people in the world. There's not a lot of options for spur-of-the-moment babysitters, meal cookers, errand runners. (Believe me--I've been looking for a spur-of-the-moment babysitter for three years.) And I've been a little proud of the fact that my life has room for emergencies, room for unscheduled stops and u-turns. I'm grateful for it. It makes me remember why I wanted to do this in the first place--to have time for my family, not just my immediate family, but my extended family as well. To have a life that has space in it.
I've found myself drifting a lot this summer, watching time float by. I've been restless and resentful of these large blocks of unscheduled time that seem only able to be filled with the relentless constancy of tedious chores--the same dishes, the same diapers, the same laundry, the same dirty carpets and empty cat bowls. I've felt invisible and useless. But this past month I have remembered the blessing of being able to say "yes" when someone desperately needed a chunk of my time. I forget sometimes, holed up inside this house, that in this insanely overstuffed, multitasking world that the gift of time is a very great gift indeed.
It'sa delicate business, being a housewife in the modern age. Most of us stick with the "stay-at-home mom" label, and I usually do, too. It makes what you do seem noble enough that the modern world at least pays lip service to your sacrifice, even if they don't really mean it. You are sacrificing your career potential to stay at home for your children, to give them the best you can possibly give.
But there's more to it. I'm not just a stay-at-home mom. I'm a housewife, too. Some stay-at-home moms may be just that, with housekeepers or maids to take care of the housewifery so they can solely be mothers. I can't speak for them. (I can't afford regular maid service.) So I'm a housewife, too. And boy, is that an unappreciated job. No one even bothers to pay lip service to that one--in fact, the term 'housewife' is suspect, as if you're a Stepford Wife Clone in a 50s housedress and apron. In our culture, housework is reviled. It is not something to take pride in, it is something to be foisted on to someone else at the earliest possible economic opportunity. When speaking of housekeeping, it is only respected or admired if one is discussing it in the way of Martha Stewart or Real Simple magazine--if one is speaking of making a home beautiful, decorating it, organizing it with $5,000 worth of cunning little bins from the Container Store.
But meanwhile, someone's got to clean the toilets, vacuum the crumbs off the carpet, wash the fingerprints off the windows and iron the laundry. Someone's got to change the sheets, wipe down the sticky railing, pick up the toys and cook dinner. Every day. Again and again and again and again. And the main thought that runs through your head as you pick up the same stupid dump truck off the same stupid playroom floor for the 50th time that day is THIS IS NOT THE REASON I EARNED A MASTER'S DEGREE. You can finesse a little glory and prestige out of staying home to raise children. You can massage some respect out of serving as your home's interior designer and organizer. But to stay home to be the maid? C'mon. It's pretty humiliating in this day and age.
But housewifery is what takes up the bulk of my day. The running of a home is a colossal, constant unchecked "to do" list. There is always a chore to be done. I am as much housewife as mother. Right now, as a I write, the living room is covered in toys, the kitchen is full of dishes (and then there's that sticky place where Max spilled his juice this morning), a washer full of damp clothes to dry, and a list of errands that need running.
I just finished To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife by Caitlin Flanagan. And it speaks to this issue (although Ms. Flanagan speaks as one who has both housekeeper and nanny and a full-time stay-at-home dream job with paying writing gigs, so I took some of her words with a grain of salt.) I went looking for answers but didn't find many. It's a good book, though, and one that provacatively addresses these issues. In the chapter "Drudges and Celebrities" she writes:
There was a time when the measure of a home was found in the woman who ran it--who was there all day long, who understood that certain aspects of 'hominess' had less to do with spit and polish than with continuity and permanence. As these old standards wane, a new one has emerged, and it is [Martha] Stewart's...But almost any project she cooks up is less daunting than the one it is meant to replace: keeping a family together, under one roof, home.
Sometimes I feel caught between generations, between cultural shifts. I'm grateful for the women's rights movement of the 1970s, because it opened up a world of options I never would have dreamed of otherwise. I also feel a little defensive reading Betty Freidan, or some of the newer feminist writers, who make me feel that my life choices are somehow a smack in the face of feminism, a retreat. I also find myself at times getting a little cross-eyed with boredom in the world of stay-at-home mothers, wishing that sometimes we could find something to talk about besides our children. (Don't even get me started on those weird suburban "Moms Night Out" evenings I've been invited to involving houseware or makeup parties or worse, that weird Bunco game.)
I care about my family, passionately, and I refuse to apologize to anyone for that. I honestly believe it is important that my kids grow up with a readily available mom, and that if my husband is working 10-12 hours a day to give me that privilege, the least I can do is make things
neat and tidy and maybe have some semblence of a home-cooked meal on the table when he comes home at night. I have grown to appreciate the calm and peace that comes from a clean, well-ordered home, and I'm willing to scrub a toilet or two for that calm. Maybe when my kids are older, I'll say "to hell with all this" and jump into some new endeavor--and here is where I respectfully doff my hat to feminism, because without the activists of that movement, I might not have the option to do so. But I'm not going to apologize for being a housewife, either.
I have written before about Buddhist monks who create these beautifully-colored, intricate mandalas from sand, sometimes taking all day to do so, only to wipe it away and begin fresh the next day. In our society, a pointless exercise in futility. Yet to them the point is the activity--the meditative and spiritually open state that comes only through the banality and tedium of the task. I've seen this, too, in the writings of Catholic Benedictine monks who see an intrinsic link between their mundane tasks of keeping up the abbey and the cycles of their prayer. I believe my housework is my mandala, my liturgy of the hours. (At least, I believe this on my best days, when I'm not grumbling under my breath about the pointlessness and futility of it all.)
After all, my early immersion into punk rock taught me that just because something is considered right or wrong by societal norms does not in any fashion make that right or wrong. One hundred million people have been wrong before. So sue me--I'm a housewife. You got a problem with that?
Since my last posting, there's been a lot of life--tinged with the shadow of death--around here. My baby boy turned three years old. Some close family family members are moving to start a new chapter of their life in Kentucky. My sister-in-law is dealing with a cancer diagnosis just passed down to her mother. A close member of our extended family (who, being proud and disinclined to enjoy having minutae about his/her life paraded across the Internet, shall remain nameless) is sick, very sick. We've been doing a lot of caregiving over the past month, wondering what the final out come of all this sickness will be. It's been reminding me of the vigils we kept last year at my father-in-law's bedside just before he passed away, and the time my grandfather lived with my husband and me after my grandmother passed on.
Caregiving. It seems to come with the territory of family, those who are bound to you through blood and marriage. At least, that's how it's seemed in my life. I've been spending a lot of time this past month babysitting so other relatives can visit at the hospital, preparing meals, running errands. Doesn't leave a lot of time to write.
The thing about being a stay-at-home mother/housewife in this day and age is that, well, we're a bit of a dying breed. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of underscheduled people in the world. There's not a lot of options for spur-of-the-moment babysitters, meal cookers, errand runners. (Believe me--I've been looking for a spur-of-the-moment babysitter for three years.) And I've been a little proud of the fact that my life has room for emergencies, room for unscheduled stops and u-turns. I'm grateful for it. It makes me remember why I wanted to do this in the first place--to have time for my family, not just my immediate family, but my extended family as well. To have a life that has space in it.
I've found myself drifting a lot this summer, watching time float by. I've been restless and resentful of these large blocks of unscheduled time that seem only able to be filled with the relentless constancy of tedious chores--the same dishes, the same diapers, the same laundry, the same dirty carpets and empty cat bowls. I've felt invisible and useless. But this past month I have remembered the blessing of being able to say "yes" when someone desperately needed a chunk of my time. I forget sometimes, holed up inside this house, that in this insanely overstuffed, multitasking world that the gift of time is a very great gift indeed.
It'sa delicate business, being a housewife in the modern age. Most of us stick with the "stay-at-home mom" label, and I usually do, too. It makes what you do seem noble enough that the modern world at least pays lip service to your sacrifice, even if they don't really mean it. You are sacrificing your career potential to stay at home for your children, to give them the best you can possibly give.
But there's more to it. I'm not just a stay-at-home mom. I'm a housewife, too. Some stay-at-home moms may be just that, with housekeepers or maids to take care of the housewifery so they can solely be mothers. I can't speak for them. (I can't afford regular maid service.) So I'm a housewife, too. And boy, is that an unappreciated job. No one even bothers to pay lip service to that one--in fact, the term 'housewife' is suspect, as if you're a Stepford Wife Clone in a 50s housedress and apron. In our culture, housework is reviled. It is not something to take pride in, it is something to be foisted on to someone else at the earliest possible economic opportunity. When speaking of housekeeping, it is only respected or admired if one is discussing it in the way of Martha Stewart or Real Simple magazine--if one is speaking of making a home beautiful, decorating it, organizing it with $5,000 worth of cunning little bins from the Container Store.
But meanwhile, someone's got to clean the toilets, vacuum the crumbs off the carpet, wash the fingerprints off the windows and iron the laundry. Someone's got to change the sheets, wipe down the sticky railing, pick up the toys and cook dinner. Every day. Again and again and again and again. And the main thought that runs through your head as you pick up the same stupid dump truck off the same stupid playroom floor for the 50th time that day is THIS IS NOT THE REASON I EARNED A MASTER'S DEGREE. You can finesse a little glory and prestige out of staying home to raise children. You can massage some respect out of serving as your home's interior designer and organizer. But to stay home to be the maid? C'mon. It's pretty humiliating in this day and age.
But housewifery is what takes up the bulk of my day. The running of a home is a colossal, constant unchecked "to do" list. There is always a chore to be done. I am as much housewife as mother. Right now, as a I write, the living room is covered in toys, the kitchen is full of dishes (and then there's that sticky place where Max spilled his juice this morning), a washer full of damp clothes to dry, and a list of errands that need running.
I just finished To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife by Caitlin Flanagan. And it speaks to this issue (although Ms. Flanagan speaks as one who has both housekeeper and nanny and a full-time stay-at-home dream job with paying writing gigs, so I took some of her words with a grain of salt.) I went looking for answers but didn't find many. It's a good book, though, and one that provacatively addresses these issues. In the chapter "Drudges and Celebrities" she writes:
There was a time when the measure of a home was found in the woman who ran it--who was there all day long, who understood that certain aspects of 'hominess' had less to do with spit and polish than with continuity and permanence. As these old standards wane, a new one has emerged, and it is [Martha] Stewart's...But almost any project she cooks up is less daunting than the one it is meant to replace: keeping a family together, under one roof, home.
Sometimes I feel caught between generations, between cultural shifts. I'm grateful for the women's rights movement of the 1970s, because it opened up a world of options I never would have dreamed of otherwise. I also feel a little defensive reading Betty Freidan, or some of the newer feminist writers, who make me feel that my life choices are somehow a smack in the face of feminism, a retreat. I also find myself at times getting a little cross-eyed with boredom in the world of stay-at-home mothers, wishing that sometimes we could find something to talk about besides our children. (Don't even get me started on those weird suburban "Moms Night Out" evenings I've been invited to involving houseware or makeup parties or worse, that weird Bunco game.)
I care about my family, passionately, and I refuse to apologize to anyone for that. I honestly believe it is important that my kids grow up with a readily available mom, and that if my husband is working 10-12 hours a day to give me that privilege, the least I can do is make things
neat and tidy and maybe have some semblence of a home-cooked meal on the table when he comes home at night. I have grown to appreciate the calm and peace that comes from a clean, well-ordered home, and I'm willing to scrub a toilet or two for that calm. Maybe when my kids are older, I'll say "to hell with all this" and jump into some new endeavor--and here is where I respectfully doff my hat to feminism, because without the activists of that movement, I might not have the option to do so. But I'm not going to apologize for being a housewife, either.
I have written before about Buddhist monks who create these beautifully-colored, intricate mandalas from sand, sometimes taking all day to do so, only to wipe it away and begin fresh the next day. In our society, a pointless exercise in futility. Yet to them the point is the activity--the meditative and spiritually open state that comes only through the banality and tedium of the task. I've seen this, too, in the writings of Catholic Benedictine monks who see an intrinsic link between their mundane tasks of keeping up the abbey and the cycles of their prayer. I believe my housework is my mandala, my liturgy of the hours. (At least, I believe this on my best days, when I'm not grumbling under my breath about the pointlessness and futility of it all.)
After all, my early immersion into punk rock taught me that just because something is considered right or wrong by societal norms does not in any fashion make that right or wrong. One hundred million people have been wrong before. So sue me--I'm a housewife. You got a problem with that?
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