So. Spring is upon us and the school term has ended. This is by far my favorite time of year. The days are warming and lengthening, the plants are emerging in bright green freshness, and my toes aren’t constantly blue from cold. Also, I have absolutely nothing to do all day.
Well, no, that’s not accurate. I have plenty to do, but it is all at my own discretion, and that pleases me greatly. I had been contracted to teach an online class for Pitt’s summer term, but alas, it was cancelled due to low enrollment – I do lament that. I like to teach, and I like the money Pitt pays me to teach. However, even if I had been teaching that class, because it was an online course through the College of General Studies, my time would still have been basically unscheduled. And I love that.
One of the personality traits that has left me ill-suited to more traditional 9-to-5 work is a fierce resentment of schedules: I don’t mind doing work, but why can’t I do it on my own time? Why can’t I get up late and work into the night? Why can’t I work hard all morning and then goof off in the afternoon? What difference does it make, as long as the work gets done? I’m much happier when my time is my own. (I have similar feelings about direct supervision: I know what needs done, I have the skills to do it, just tell me when it needs done by, and I’ll do it – I don’t need someone looking over my shoulder all day, kthxbai.)
So here I am, with all the manipulable time in the world, and it turns out that when left to my own devices, I settle more or less comfortably into being a housewife.
Don’t misunderstand, I have my own interests to pursue. There’s swimming at the PAA; I am developing a summer reading list, and am currently reading Ivan Turgenev’s Sketches from a Hunter’s Album (everyone should read the story “Bezhin Lea”); I’m hoping to get Sarah to my place soon to show me how to use my sewing machine (ahem); and I even have some knitting I plan to attempt, probably leading to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
But day-to-day, I’ve been tidying and buying groceries and cooking. I’ve been trying to make lots of healthy stuff for Ted and I – veggies, whole grains, lean proteins – and so I’ve been buying stuff fresh every few days and hitting the farmer’s market, now that it’s open. Downstairs, I cleaned all the things, and Ted’s been making headway on the laundry, so next all the upstairs things will get cleaned. I’ve even been keeping up on the dishes.
I wonder if all of this could seem weird. I am a feminist, after all, and yet here I am, cleaning and cooking and not doing anything formal with my education and remaining completely dependent on my husband’s income. And I feel absolutely fine about that. To begin with, the belief that the work of keeping a commodious home for yourself and your loved ones is somehow less important than going to a job and earning money rests on two assumptions that I reject: 1) that there is such a thing as “women’s work” and “men’s work”, and 2) that “women’s work” is less important or meaningful than “men’s work,” and so women only achieve accomplishment and equality when they do not do “women’s work” and instead do “men’s work.”
Fuck a bunch of that.
Earning money is a nasty requirement for living in our dystopian late-capitalist society; it is not a measure of value or achievement in personal industry whatsoever. My husband is fortunate in that he earns (too little) money doing work that is at least not destructive and/or essentially meaningless. But the fact alone that his work away from the home earns money and my work in the home does not is not an indicator of the value of his work or of my work at all. Further, the fact that I happen to be a woman who is doing what is traditionally thought of as women’s work is moot to me – I am a person doing work that is worthwhile and enjoyable; the stereotypes others have ascribed to that work, or the history of its imposition on unwilling other persons, should not shape my opinion of it, or anyone else’s opinion of me my doing it. It is work that needs done in my home, and I am just the person to do it.
And luckily, I don’t have children, only cats, so the housewifery is still completed in plenty of time to read books and write blogs and attempt to sew skirts.
It also occurs to me that such a lifestyle as my own over the summer could appear lazy, and upon consideration, I think that this reveals a sad fact about our society: we’ve lost track of how much work is enough work. A friend of mine recently said on Facebook, “G.S.W. Gym, sleep, work. That’s all I do anymore.” Going to the gym is good – exercise is good for you. I know this person’s job is one in which she helps others, so that’s good, too. And everyone knows that sleep is good.* But what about hobbies, relationship-building and maintenance, and just free fucking time to listen to the sparrows in the hedge and sip a glass of cheap wine out of beautiful glass? I think Americans may have lost track of what work is for, and what it is not for. Work is for accomplishing things that need accomplished so that society can proceed as smoothly and happily as possible for as many different people as possible. Work is NOT for determining who is “better” than whomever else because of the nature or quantity of their work, for defining ourselves as individuals, or in general for anything other thing than maybe earning a little filthy lucre and, hopefully, improving the world or at least the city for ourselves and our fellows.
I’m improving my world and Ted’s and the kitty cats’, and that’s good enough for me. And hopefully, since his world at home is a little improved, Ted can do his work of improving the world or at least the city with a little extra vigor – no one does their work, whatever it is, in a vacuum, after all.
And come the fall, I plan to go back to work, God willing, as a teacher full-time – work that earns a little money and suits my personality and improves the world. The housewifery will likely slip, then, and we’ll eat a lot more take-out. But for the moment, it’s vegetables all the way.
Vegetables and blogs in defense of housewifery.
*I don’t mean what follows to be a critique of my friend – I’m not saying that she doesn’t maintain her relationships, make time for wine, or that she defines herself or others through her or their work; I’m not saying anything about her at all, except that the particular instance of her status update got me thinking in general terms about the general American population’s views on work. Just to be clear!