Going Around and Around

During my first year in retirement my days were filled with building projects.  The daily chores were novel and not at all arduous.  Accidents did not slow me down one bit.  And then I went on vacation.  I returned in a state of “vacation” and have been unsettled ever since.

It’s not that I don’t have plenty of things to do but when I look at the To-Do-List I shudder.  I am reluctant to get started on any of the purging projects and the creative ones seem daunting.  What has gotten into my head?

I decided to take the figurative bull by the horns and tackle that blocking wall.  How?  You may well ask.  First of all I decided I should write down the list that had been piling up in my head.  Then I thought that reading light, current magazines would give me a breakthrough into the minds of women in general.  Please don’t be offended because I soon discovered that these “light” magazines were anything but light.  There is plenty of rich information in these magazines that should be of interest to a wide range of people not least of which is the articles on how to spend for less.

As I sat on the front porch warming myself up and feeling guilty for doing so Mom said “You need to give yourself time to enjoy doing nothing”.  Without me saying a word she knew what I was feeling, that old sense of guilt at not being up and doing something.  I looked at her and then asked her “how did you spend your days when we were little”?

In 1956 she had 3 children in diapers and every morning she had to boil water because they did not have hot running water in their apartment.  The water was then put in a huge tub where she washed diapers which she then hung out to dry.  She had to feed us, dress us and then take us with her when she went out to market to get the day’s groceries because they didn’t have a refrigerated.  Sometimes she baked her own bread but often she bought it at the bakery.  She had to wash the dishes after lunch, put us down for a nap (no easy task as both my sister and I were firecrackers) and then hope to goodness no one came for a visit while we napped.  Somewhere in between these tasks she also had to clean the house and I was amazed to learn that she washed the floor almost every single day.  She said that the floors were old wooden ones and that there was risk of worms if the floor wasn’t absolutely clean.  With three young children playing on the floor she simply had to get down on her hands and knees to do a thorough scrub.  She had to come up with creative recipes for making a meal with ground pork and beef as they usually had that 4 times a week.

Would you believe it, I still managed to ask “but what did you do the rest of the time”?  I was lucky Mom didn’t throw something at my head.