Slippers

Please tell me, who in their right mind would pick these slippers up in a store say, two weeks before christmas and think to themselves, "Wow, what a great looking slipper, that color, that shape, this is something I've just got to give to my wife as a present". Unbelievably that someone would be my husband. What makes the whole thing even more distrubing is that I WEAR them.
I've only had these slippers for a few months and they are already ruined. I've had to mash down the back so that I could actually walk in these beauties and they are a little dirty because I've been nervy enough to wear them to the mailbox. I've promised myself that I would get rid of them, find a pair of chic moccasin-type slippers instead, but I haven't done it. On the days when I don't have to leave the house before 2pm, I end up staying in them all day.
What I have begun to wonder is what 1950s house wives would wear on their feet while they were at home, and that perhaps, the effort to look lovely no matter what they were doing, was really a way to demonstrate power and efficiency to their husbands, a way to say, see how effortlessly I can perform all these taks, notice how lovely I look while doing it?
But maybe for those women there was more to dressing up while doing the housework then just impressing a husband. When I happen to catch sight of my feet incased in these shapeless bulbs of fabric, my self esteem seems to take on the "look" of the slippers; dumpy, shabby and dirty. I could be shower fresh and wrinkle free, but those slippers make me feel like a slob. Perhaps dressing for the day, not matter what they were doing, was a way for women to feel on the ball. A way of vaulting themselves over the sandwiches that needed to be made, the dishes in the sink, a way for them to feel fabulous while hanging the laundry on the line.

Clean Laundry

One of my least favorite things to do is folding and putting away a wrinkled clump of clean laundry. I usually try to fold the clothes as soon as they come out of the dryer, that way if they stay in the basket for a few days or a week, they still look good. Lately I've been so busy that I have been dumping load after clean load of laundry into the basket in front of the dryer until the pile is so big I can hardly see over it as I carry it up the stairs.
Tonight the TV is supposed to distract me while I make neat piles of shirts and pants, but all I can think about is the mound of dirty laundry still waiting for me in the basement.
Not all days are like this. A good day is when I have no clean clothes strewn like small mountains in my bedroom. An exquisite day is when not only are there no clean clothes to put away, but there are no more dirty clothes to wash either. On those glistening, pristine days I go back to the hamper in the hall closet again and again. Opening the door, I let my gaze float over the white expanse of the empty laundry basket, the thrill of order making the skin on my arms tingle. 

Todd doing chores

This is my husband Todd enjoying a weekend cigar while using the leaf blower on the left-over fall leaves. He could be listening to the White Stripes or U2 or AC/DC on his ipod. 

Be Good, Be Nice, Be-long

During the 1950s there were instruction books for everything you can imagine, but they all basically said the same thing; Be Good, Be Nice, Be-long. And in the 1950s, belonging was very important.
In an attempt to try and fully understand how middle class American women survived these confining cultural structures, for the next six months I will research the lives of middle class American women who lived during the 1950s & 60s, and photograph my efforts to cook, clean and run a family with the cultural high standards of that time.
That said, I am already mentally strained just thinking about folding myself into a role that suffocated my paternal grandmother. I am in a constant tug-of-war with myself over giving my full-time school studies and personal needs, as much weight as, managing the lives of my kids, making sure everyone has clean underwear and creating a "good" dinner every night.
I have a husband who demands nothing from me in terms of upkeep with the household chores, who does weekend power-washes, which means he manages to do all the laundry and put it away in two days, and will help-out when ever asked. But I am the one who is home, and so I have noticed a tilt in what our jobs are. I mean, there is a difference between helping someone out (which implies the job is theirs in the first place), and noticing what needs to be done and doing it.
In a sense, some of my inner struggles are the same as my grandmother's, but not all of them. She would have never asked my grandfather to help out with the laundry, it just never would have occured to her, but she must have thought about it at times, about the unfairness of it all. She knew something wasn't right about the agreement she made with her life, why else would she have burned her college degrees, the pictures of herself as a young woman?
Whether you make the choice to have children and work, or to have children and stay home, one question must be true for all of us-
How much time and space can I claim for myself?