Chores - by Mom

Personal History Number 2

Chores

My parents were not enthusiastic about giving me housework or yard work on a regular basis. We didn’t have chore charts either. When I was a teenager, my dad was very set against my getting a little summer job, but was willing to permit me to do volunteer work, which I did at age 13, as a Red Cross volunteer on a youth program, and later a couple summers on Congressional election campaigns.

I’m not sure what the issue was, but I wonder about it sometimes, whether my mother didn’t feel like taking the time to teach me to do housework, or if my dad had a problem with it.  He did have an attitude about physical labor, that it was somewhat beneath him.  I’m not sure how he squared that with Mom, leaving her to do the lawn mowing, the house painting, and the other things that needed to be done.

            One thing I loved to do was to “clean house” while mom was at work and surprise her with the vacuuming or other tasks.  I think now, I may have just made things worse….

            On the other hand,  I was a little day-dreamy, and maybe just wasn’t an effective enough cleaner to make it worth her effort to keep me on task.

            I was quite a reader, though, at an early age, and there was an age difference of 5,7, and 9 years between me and Ed, Elizabeth and James, respectively. Mother would take us to the library faithfully, every week or two, and we could check out the maximum books permitted for each kid’s library card.  My “chore” if you want to call it that, was to read to the other kids.  Sometimes I would help them learn to read, but mostly, they listened to me.  I loved doing the voices and sound effects, and leading them in choral recitations of repeated phrases.  We had our favorite Dr. Seuss books, plus Wind in the Willows series or something like it. Pippi Longstocking we loved.  Later, I read them the Chronicles of Narnia, or as much as they could tolerate. I know this kept everyone out of mom’s hair while she made dinner every night, and paid bills, and did laundry.

            In my parents’ view, our main job was to get good grades, read, practice music, do our homework perfectly,  and earn scholarships so we could go to college.

            My other “chore” was babysitting the kids, when Mom worked for Bernardin company in Evansville, Indiana, which made jars lids.  She was the personal secretary to Mr. Bernardin and sometimes brought work home, such as invitations to his childrens’ weddings and his brother’s elevation to Catholic bishop of Evansville diocese. So I would entertain my siblings and keep them (and probably me too) away from her take-home work.           

            When I was about 9 or 10, I started reading the Trixie Belden mystery series. Trixie Belden was the girl/kid detective who solved non-lethal mysteries.  She had a very rich  BFF, Honey, who was an only child. Honey was left alone in her mansion while her parents travelled. She had a governess and a groom for her horses, dozens of bathing suits, and her own pool.  Yet she envied  Trixie Belden who had three brothers and was required to do “Chores” every day.

            Along with Honey, I envied Trixie’s chores, and Trixie’s mother, who baked bread and pies. I think I asked my mother if I could have chores, and I wanted her to teach me to make bread, (which she thought was hysterically funny, because you could BUY sliced bread, in a bag, no less, at the day0old bread sotre for 30 cents a loaf, with no baking whatsoever!!)

  Eventually, I got the job of dusting her “bric-a-brac” in the dining room hutch.

            Bric-a-brac, if you don’t know, refers to a variety of china figurines, teapots, and ivory carvings she got on her travels before she was married. I loved handling these items, and probably did more day-dreaming than dusting. But that was my chore.

            We all helped wash and dry dishes, but the rotation was informal; we helped when we were told to help.  There was no dishwasher or garbage disposer.  I was convinced that I was asked to help only for the meals when we had spaghetti sauce – very messy—or fried eggs—very hard to wash off, and one time, I said just that! My sass regarding this perceived injustice was swiftly punished, and I kept my comments to an inaudible level after that.

            In high school, I baby-sat during the summers, and during the school year, every girl at my school had a chore assigned for the whole academic year.  These chores had to be finished before classes each day. Every Friday or Saturday we did a more detailed cleaning. Usually we had about 30 minutes between the end of breakfast and the start of 1^st Period. Most chores took between 10 and 15 minutes, if you didn’t dilly-dally.  One year I had  the assignment to brush two certain staircases on my dorm hall. The ceilings were about 20 feet high, so the staircases were probably 30-40 steps each.  Then on Friday or Saturday, I washed the stairs and polished the hand-rails and spindles.  Another year, I had an assignment that was shared with two other girls – cleaning the recreation room.  Another year I helped in the kitchen from time to time; that one is pretty vague in my memory, but I know hairnets were involved!

            I think my parents’ views of work were very different.  My mother adored her own father, and bragged about how hard he worked for the family – even waiting on my grandmother personally, bringing her coffee to her bedroom,  and other considerate acts, as well as working at a hard job (ship-building) and keeping up the garden and the house.  My mother was very proud of how hard he worked.

            My father, on the other hand, seemed to disdain physical labor for himself personally and those who performed it.  When I learned toward the end of his life that one of his assignments in the military was “heavy equipment operator” I was very surprised.  When we were young, he would often take us to worksites and watch the big machines with us, but he never told me, at least, that he had done that kid of work himself. I don’t know why he wouldn’t be proud of it, except that it was “dirty” work.

            I have learned my work ethic, such as it is, from your dad, from the stories of the Mormon pioneers, from my remembrances of my mother and from meditation on what her father must have done in his various occupations.  I’ve always considered myself to be a little lazy, and tried to overcome it.