The Good Life

Heather at HumbleArts posted recently about 3 people who have inspired her idea of domestic bliss. I'm taking up the theme, though it's hard to pick just three. I'd have to say, most of all, my mother, and paternal and maternal grandmothers. All of them kept/keep very different but tidy and industrious houses, and they all did big projects. Dad's mother always had a vegetable garden larger than my house lot, and when I was very little, two milk cows, a flock of chickens, and a few pigs. These are the things I think she herself was responsible for, above and beyond the other activities of a beef farm. I don't remember Mum's mother doing farm work even when she was younger, but she must have, I suppose, before the 12 children got numerous enough and big enough. I do remember her always working on complicated, fine quality pieced quilts. In the past few years, she has moved to an apartment in town, and she keeps this up. Mum always has lots of projects, including gardens but not livestock and quilts so far (the quilts, not the livestock). A short list: sewing wedding, prom, and bridesmaid dresses; upholstering sofas and chairs; and renovating a century-old farmhouse. She manages these with a full-time job. When Ron and I moved into our house last year, we found that we couldn't get the double boxspring (mattress foundation) up the staircase because of the limited headroom. I was ready to give it away and asked Mum and Dad if they wanted it for one of their spare beds. Mum asked if I really was giving it away. Yes, I said. She and Dad opened the seams of the boxspring cover, peeled it off, used a circular saw to cut the slats in half, folded it lengthwise with springs intact, and then carried it up the stairs and put it back together. Not a trace of this operation was evident when they were done, and the boxspring has never so much as creaked. The moral of this story is "No project is too big or too crazy." I like the idea that I am carrying on in the example of other women in my family, keeping an industrious and beautiful homelife that somehow manages to calm the craziness. I don't have mad bulls in the pasture (and my garden is the size of a big postage stamp) or big quilts (ok, no quilts) being basted in the spare room, but I think of their everyday busyness and it makes my punctuated multi-tasked life seem more manageable.