I always love when I have to check off my occupation on a form and I am offered the option of Homemaker. I check that one off with a flourish, gleefully acknowledging my place in this world.
No I-can-do-it-all-better-than-a-man feminist has anything on this one. This is where the world begins and ends - in the art and joys of homemaking. I have in my power and the authority vested in me, the ability to MAKE a HOME! And what is a home but the place where we all ultimately long to be?
To think, *I* have made this place possible! I have baked the meals, cleaned the laundry, swept the floors, scraped the baby's banana goo off the linoleum and left the bathrooms free of that been-used scent. Now *this* is power!
*I* decided to have the kids line up their shoes on the steps when they come in the door and I decided where we would stack the tupperware containers. It is completely in my power to determine when the household will experience Quiet Time and in the hot sticky weather, I turn on the fans, open the doors and create that cooled off feeling. Add a glass of homemade lemonade (yes, that is an option in *my* home!) and THIS is the place my family wants to be!
I have created a haven, a resting place, a safe harbor for my 9 precious charges. They all know where to find their shoes when they want to run out the door to play an impromptu game of football with their neighborhood friends. And they know they'll find a pitcher of ice water for all those friends to share on the porch when they're hot and sweaty. There is no feeling like this in the world.
I am not being facetious or sarcastic, I am sincerely pleased to be a woman charged with the occupation of Home Maker. There is no other satisfaction to be found like that of knowing my precious family *enjoys* our home - feels safe, feels welcome and feels loved and cared for. Perhaps having our home burnt out from under us has impressed me even more with the importance of my craft. Oh how we long to be *home* now- all of us! But it is also in my power to vest this temporary safe harbor we currently inhabit with all the comforts of home - with predictability, with security, and with the knowledge that it doesn't matter where the steps are, the shoes will be still be lined up there...
1 comment:
Boy, do I understand that! My friends all thought I was weird, because I knew at 15 what I wanted in life. A husband to love and to love me, a house full of kids and life in suburbia. This is my bliss!
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