Booker and Birthday

I have been reading through Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery. While I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, I was interested in his description of some of the more self-respecting poor people: shabby but clean. (Indeed, he emphasizes cleanliness, devoting paragraphs to the toothbrush.)

I wonder if part of my feeling of hopeless trashiness comes from simply not caring a great deal about appearances. It seems so impossible. For example, last Sunday I had clean clothes on for the trip to town. Back on the farm, I had to go from the car to the trailer, and just three feet from the car, Bitsy came up and attempted to shake; her toenails streaked my jeans with orange.

With a trip to the laundromat every six weeks, I certainly don't have clean clothes for all six of us every time we get dirty. What would be the point?

Another example: dishwashing. Now I have never been good about keeping up with the dishes. But here, when I know that I'm paying for propane every time I turn on the hot water, and I know that I have fifteen minutes to wait for the water to heat up—it seems ridiculous to do dishes after every meal. But to get to the dishes every two days means that the kitchen is rarely clean; even when I have cleaned it, by the time I'm done, there is usually less than two hours before the next meal must be prepared. The current method of 90 minutes of concentrated effort every few days, while listening to a sermon or lecture, suits me well. Except it feels vaguely uncouth.

Also, I have had extremely little free time over the last year. Even tasks like dealing with paper filing or mending often get pushed off for months. It all has led to some hopelessness.

I wonder if I have allowed the hopelessness to translate into general inertia about my surroundings. I haven't ever washed the windows here, for example. And if the boys happen to smear a muddy orange hand on the trailer, that's just part of life.

But reading Booker's book made me reconsider: maybe a little pride in my dwelling, small and cheap though it may be, is in order.

Isaiah saw me cleaning the accumulated handprints of 30 months off the interior of the door (the exterior proved too difficult, the dirt too entrenched for my patience or fledgling hope). Isaiah volunteered for the cleaning job, and I was happy to hand it over.

My "desk" (Phil's dresser top) remains a wreck, but the rooms were vacuumed and swept, the most dirty of the walls washed. And it does feel much better.

Phil finished the 1000 feet of fencing he's been working on. In three days he did as much as he's been able to finish in the last year. Why was it so hard, and suddenly not so hard? I'm not sure, but I am grateful for the speed now.

When the middle boys went with Phil to get hay, Jadon and Joe went up to the orchard and dug together.

It was so precious to see, but when I snapped a photo, they heard the click, and commenced to dance. The rascals.

Isaiah wanted the mallard for his birthday. One friend commented that this would be rather like giving your mixing bowl to your daughter and saying, "This is for you. Now I'll just put it back in the cupboard until you move out." I suppose she's right, but he certainly seemed glad to hear that the mallard is now his, rather than ours.

For the cake decoration, Isaiah came up with the idea of the 8 candle standing up, with the 7 candle lying on its back, defeated. And he wanted a small blue beeswax candle that he'd made himself as one of the candles on his cake. I appreciated his input in the cake decorating: I would never have come up with such ideas.