Nom de Plume

Maribel, our cleaner, was on hiatus for several months, during which time I did the cleaning. But all of a sudden she’s back–and even though I swept, dustmopped, and mopped the entire freaking house on Saturday, you should SEE the amount of stuff she’s managed to unearth. And since we know that even Harry doesn’t shed that much in three days, we may as well admit (and yes, we’re sticking with the royal we here): We are terrible at cleaning.

And this is sexism at its finest. If a man isn’t that great at cleaning, he’s a bachelor. But, heaven forbid, if it’s a woman: she’s a slattern.

And just as an aside:
A few Thanksgivings ago, we were in Rockford gathered around some godawful Jesus loves me movie special. Jane, who is Steve’s stepgrandmother, got her hands on the remote, turned the volume down, looked piercingly at me, and said, “I just don’t believe a man should come home and night and be expected to cook dinner, clean the house, or do any woman’s work. It’s just not right.”

I mumbled something. Looking back, I wish I had said something funny, you know, “Well, you’d change your mind if you say the way I cleaned.” But in looking back, I can also see her point. She puts breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the table every day. She serves Harold at every meal. She grows her own produce and fruit. She picks, cans, jellies and pickles. She does laundry, makes the bed, washes all the dishes, and scrubs the house from top to bottom. And her real point–the words she doesn’t know how to say–is not that she doesn’t believe that men shouldn’t do “women’s work” but that she’s surrounded by a young female whippersnappers who work at jobs outside the home and in many different ways either consciously or subconsciously devalue the work she’s done her entire life. So when I think back on that, I always want to acknowledge in some way the work she does.

Then I get over it.