Last week as Abby and I were taking clothes off the line and hanging up more, Abby said, “Mommy when you let me hang up clothes with you, I love you so much! When I grow up I am going to be a great clothes hanger.”
That’s pretty much what I think whenever I’ve been doing some task in just the same way my mom and grandma used to do it. That’s part of the appeal of growing vegetables or making jam or even hanging clothes on the line. Of course I love that it’s environmentally friendly and saves me money, but it’s the emotional connection that keeps me going.
Low-tech ways of doing things are more of side-by-side way of doing things. They let me live with my kids, not just meet them at the occasional intersection. The ways of my mom and grandma make tasks not just something to get done and then spend time with my kids; they're accomplishments that we complete together.
When I was a kid my parents had a huge garden, even though we lived in the city. My sister and brothers and I spent a lot of time weeding it, picking and snapping beans, shelling peas and freezing all this stuff. We really resented that we had to do all that work and couldn’t play with our friends. The funny thing was though, all the neighbor kids wanted to do garden work with us! Working with our friends certainly made the job much more pleasant, even if we thought they were weird.
You can’t go backwards. I realize that, but I think that there are some ways that we might think about reviving. These stories and memories tell me there’s a truth to my sense that modern efficiency has a cost much more than the environmental one.
4 comments:
i hadn't considered letting my kids join me in most of these tasks yet, although I do recognize the connection with mom and grandma when I do them. I've also found out that what i thought were big, involved tasks that take so much time really aren't that big of jobs and i had plenty of time to do them after all.
oh, and i'm still not over the resentment of all the gardening apparently because i haven't been able to convince myself that i could possibly pull off a garden bigger than a wheel barrow for all the memories of hours and hours of weeding, harvesting, prepping and perserving said garden and garden items.
Yeah, I'm with you Christi, I don't think I'm over the resentment either. HOWEVER, I do think your kids must be old enough by now to working for you. LOL! I know my mom has a picture of me and Jeff kneading bread when Jeff was in kindergarten (so I must have been 1 or MAYBE 2).
We were also eating apple slices, but we still had the bread out to be kneaded.
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