The Virtue of Chores
Choring About
I have spent the last four days in self-imposed solitude away from the city and beside the sea. Freed from the distractions of radio and television, and faced with numerous physical chores on my work list, I have experienced a certain soothing of the soul.
My Dad died two weeks ago. “Chored about today” was the most common phrase in his 18-month diary from January 1, 1941 to early July 1942. I doubt he gave much thought to the fact he had created a new verb. He didn’t list all the chores but as anyone who has grown up or spent an extended period of time on a farm knows, they were many and they were mundane. Picking rocks, sharpening fence posts, stuking grain, shoveling snow, chopping wood – the list is long. What does one have to do except think when one is choring? I suppose a truly modern chore-person would have his MP3 player and headset on, effectively anaesthetizing the brain, but I went purely retro with my choring and it was good.
I thought about good things for the most part. I thought about my Dad and how hard he worked as a farmer for so little monetary reward. I thought of my Mom, married two weeks before her 18th birthday and 18 months later back with her parents with her new-born son, my brother, praying for Dad’s return from active duty. I thought of what it must have been like for them as they built their first house with their own hands, and as they endured the uncertainty of weather throughout each growing season.
I remembered how excited I was by prairie thunder storms with their spectacular lightning displays and the ferocity of golf ball sized hail stones as they bounced off the roof and put little dimples in the ashphalt shingles. And I thought how differently my parents must have viewed those displays of nature’s power with its consequence of cows killed by lightning and fields of wheat and barley flattened by hailstones. Yet through it all I can’t remember ever being really unhappy as a farm kid and though my parents must often have been stressed and anxious, they rarely showed it.
Each new day brought unlimited opportunity for the exercise of one’s imagination. Bale piles became rugged battlefields, and death spirals off imaginary cliffs ended with a soft thud in a pile of straw. Like Fearless Fosdick, enemy bullets could pierce one’s heart or brain but we always lived.
Picking rocks and roots produced some grumbles but throwing the smaller stones at my brother while ducking his return missile helped pass the time. Playing fox and geese and making angels in the snow, made up for the occasional face wash as punishment from my older brother for my too sharp tongue.
These and many more thoughts scudded across my mind like prairie clouds as I cleared drainage ditches, raked leaves, pruned fruit trees and bushwhacked blackberry brambles and underbrush.
And tonight I will go down to the dock, lie on my back and gaze at the starlit sky and marvel at the universe out there and the God who made it and give thanks for my parents and for my life.
I have spent the last four days in self-imposed solitude away from the city and beside the sea. Freed from the distractions of radio and television, and faced with numerous physical chores on my work list, I have experienced a certain soothing of the soul.
My Dad died two weeks ago. “Chored about today” was the most common phrase in his 18-month diary from January 1, 1941 to early July 1942. I doubt he gave much thought to the fact he had created a new verb. He didn’t list all the chores but as anyone who has grown up or spent an extended period of time on a farm knows, they were many and they were mundane. Picking rocks, sharpening fence posts, stuking grain, shoveling snow, chopping wood – the list is long. What does one have to do except think when one is choring? I suppose a truly modern chore-person would have his MP3 player and headset on, effectively anaesthetizing the brain, but I went purely retro with my choring and it was good.
I thought about good things for the most part. I thought about my Dad and how hard he worked as a farmer for so little monetary reward. I thought of my Mom, married two weeks before her 18th birthday and 18 months later back with her parents with her new-born son, my brother, praying for Dad’s return from active duty. I thought of what it must have been like for them as they built their first house with their own hands, and as they endured the uncertainty of weather throughout each growing season.
I remembered how excited I was by prairie thunder storms with their spectacular lightning displays and the ferocity of golf ball sized hail stones as they bounced off the roof and put little dimples in the ashphalt shingles. And I thought how differently my parents must have viewed those displays of nature’s power with its consequence of cows killed by lightning and fields of wheat and barley flattened by hailstones. Yet through it all I can’t remember ever being really unhappy as a farm kid and though my parents must often have been stressed and anxious, they rarely showed it.
Each new day brought unlimited opportunity for the exercise of one’s imagination. Bale piles became rugged battlefields, and death spirals off imaginary cliffs ended with a soft thud in a pile of straw. Like Fearless Fosdick, enemy bullets could pierce one’s heart or brain but we always lived.
Picking rocks and roots produced some grumbles but throwing the smaller stones at my brother while ducking his return missile helped pass the time. Playing fox and geese and making angels in the snow, made up for the occasional face wash as punishment from my older brother for my too sharp tongue.
These and many more thoughts scudded across my mind like prairie clouds as I cleared drainage ditches, raked leaves, pruned fruit trees and bushwhacked blackberry brambles and underbrush.
And tonight I will go down to the dock, lie on my back and gaze at the starlit sky and marvel at the universe out there and the God who made it and give thanks for my parents and for my life.
posted by Ben Buan | 8:20 p.m.
<< Home