Grass maybe greener

This has been one of those weeks, where things go kind of at full-tilt boogie during the day, and then I come home and realize that on top of piano practice, and cooking up my vegetable dinner, and whatever other house-chores await me, I have a pile of grading.

(At least this weekend things will let up a bit - I will have two days without grading, if I get the exam I give today graded today or tomorrow. I'm contemplating figuring out something fun to do)

Anyway, this morning while eating my bowl of cereal, I was flipping through one of my Farm Journal cookbooks.

(I think it's the Country Cookbook? Maybe? A big thick one with lots of recipes? I should check, because as it turns out I have two copies of it - both of them are one of the earlier (1960s) printing - and I'd be happy to send my extra on to someone else who liked the Farm Journal cookbooks and wanted this one. They are very good cookbooks and I've tried as much as possible to assemble a set from antique stores and used-book stores. There are a couple I lack, and the version of the "Bread Book" I have is a newer reprint and some of the recipes have been changed - and some of the good old ones left out. And I have yet to find a copy of the Pie cookbook - even though I rarely make pie, still, I"m enough of a "completist" to want it)

They have a chapter in there on pickles. And I got to thinking about that - canning, and jam-making, and pickles, and all that. That was something my mom did every summer when I was a kid. She would can tomatoes and make tomato sauce and can it, and she'd make different kinds of jam (some years the family would go to a you-pick strawberry farm, and we'd get lots of strawberries, and she'd make jam. And oh, the peach jam she made. The only commercial jam that I've had that comes to being anywhere nearly as good is Stonewall Farms' "peach amaretto" jam. No, I don't think my mom put amaretto in her jam but I know she put a single clove and a maraschino cherry in each jar. (And it was a big deal to be the one who got the cherry).  And she made pickles of different kinds, and something called mustard pickles, and picalilli, and sometimes pickled green tomatoes, if we had an early frost.

And I never really  liked cucumber pickles or the mustard pickle but I like the IDEA of canning.

And I got to thinking: I wonder if a lot of the appeal of the so-called "New Domesticity" has to do with the fact that it's DIFFERENT from what a lot of us do every day. And if maybe a certain amount of the "Mommy Wars" has to do with people looking at what other people do, and feeling a bit jealous, and thus feeling a bit defensive of their own position, and then lashing out - saying the other way of doing things must be "bad," and their way of doing things must be "right" - because by asserting that, then they don't feel so much that they made a mistake in their choices.

And if, because of economic or cultural reasons or whatever, the pendulum were to swing back to where it used to be in the 1950s (or whatever fabled past time where women mostly stayed home), there'd soon be a huge outcry for women to go to work outside the home, that their talents were being wasted, that they were in stultifying situations.

Because really, neither being a homemaker nor being a working person is entirely a bed of roses.

I get fed up with what I do on a regular basis (more regular at the end of the semester, when situations like this are happening or when I have my slightly-OCD-student stopping by every 20 minutes to ask if I've graded the assignment that they turned in a week before it was due.)

And I especially get frustrated with the evanescent nature of what I do - prep a lecture, give the lecture, and where did it go? You have to prep another one tomorrow. Or grading: you just finish a pile of grading and another one shows up. Or doing paperwork. Or writing manuscripts - send it in, get it rejected, rewrite, send it in somewhere else, lather, rinse, repeat.

And there's nothing you can really point to and go "I did that." Even the papers I've published, they don't feel very real or very substantial to me. Who's going to use them? While I get excited on the rare instances that I'm reading a paper that cites something I was involved with, that's vanishingly rare and I realize that most of my participation in the academic-publishing game is aimed at keeping my tenure and less at making a huge impact on the world. (It's like, if academic publishing were dodgeball - I'm the kid cringing in the corner trying to avoid being hit (losing my job or facing a reprimand) and not the one running out to grab and throw balls, or trying to catch a ball someone else threw).

(And also, with the papers I've gotten published? I am so heartily sick of them by the time I'm done with all the revisions and the proof-checking and all that that I almost never want to see them again)

But when I make something, even a dumb pair of socks, I can look at it and go, "I did this. I made something useful."

But I realize that with domesticity, there are lots of things that aren't so great. If I had somehow gone full-on homemaker (and that would require a partner who was raking in sufficient money to support us both), I'd spend an awful lot of time cleaning. Or doing laundry. Or dishes. Or cooking "alternate" meals, if we had children and they were picky.

"Aunt Jane of Kentucky" (a fictional quilt-maker who was written about in a number of short stories by Eliza Calvert Hall) once said something along the lines of, "If a woman thought of all the dishes she had washed in her life, she'd like to lie down and die" (presented as an explanation as to why she made quilts - because quilts stayed done).

And I admit, if you subbed in "grading" for "washing dishes" in that sentence, it would be true of me. (I live alone, and I have a dishwasher - so generally washing dishes is no big deal).

There ARE good things about working, and about working in academia. Once in a while you get a little recognition for what you do. You are probably taken for granted less than you would be as a homemaker. There are fewer mentally-stultifying tasks you have to take on. And you can dock your students points if they leave dirty beakers out on the counter; it's harder to do that if it's your child or your husband leaving dirty glasses out on the counter. You have a reason for getting out of pajamas and leaving the house in the morning. I suppose you can say you're having a positive impact on the next generation. (Though sometimes I wonder about that one, when I have students in a "later" class in the sequence after having them in an "earlier" class, and I say something like, "Remember the Ideal Gas Law?" and am met by blank stares)

(I admit, I'm reaching here for the "good things." Well, that shows where I'm located - in the middle of academia, it's easy to see its flaws and it's equally easy to see the attraction of being an Earth Mama type homemaker, with a big garden and making homemade bread and stuff)

So, I don't know. Maybe the answer just is "There's a lot about adulthood that just stinks" and there's no path that doesn't have more than its share of stinkiness - so you choose which one works best for you, and you try to celebrate the good things and try to put up with the stinky things. But some days, the stinky things really overwhelm the good things.

***

I'm toying vaguely with the idea of making a trip to McKinney this weekend. For one thing, this is the last open weekend I will have for a while. And I feel like I need to get out and do something "fun." But in the con column: I really already have more fabric than I will ever sew up into quilts (One of the big attractions of McKinney is the quilt shops). And it might be storming on Saturday. (Sunday is not a possibility: I have church, and also most places in McKinney are closed on Sunday). And, I don't know. I have an exam to write for next Friday and I know I'm going to be slammed with grading this coming week.