I’ve been sitting in an airport most of today, subject to the inescapable barrage of manufactured outrage that is CNN, and was offered this lifeline of sanity from a reader. She was responding to a posting of last December in which I noted the tone of lamentation expressed by an author in “The Atlantic” over “The New Domesticity.”
Christina writes:
I’ve never been on this site before, but stumbled on it by accident. My husband and I aren’t really of a liberal disposition, but we do, in fact, want to live more simply. I was born in the 80s, and as such, have never lived in a world where I wasn’t told constantly that I could be anything I wanted (except for a housewife, because despite that being exactly what my mother was, it was always made clear that this life-choice was simply not an option for me or my sisters) and that I should study hard so that I could have a sucessful professional life, and never need to depend on a man. Fast forward to 2009, I’m married now to an awesome Welshman, and we’re planning to move to Wales and buy a bit of land for our own. I’ve done everything my mother taught me not to. I’m married, I have a baby on the way (gasp! you’re much to young for a family!) and I’m moving to the other side of the Atlantic to hang out on a farm. I can veggies and make jam, I garden, I sew, I cook, I bake bread everyday, I knit, I teach my baby the basics (but she goes to Welsh School now.) I embroider, and you know what, I love every second of it. I’m not stupid, I read extensively, and I don’t feel like I’m short-changing myself just because I’m not out working for a company who doesn’t give two straws about me or my well being. I didn’t choose this life to be rebellious and do what I was told not to, I did it because my family is more important to me than some nameless faceless company that wouldn’t give two straws about me. I don’t hate business, business is important. But I feel that I’m doing more good in my home. My business is my family and it’s my job to make sure that I raise healthy, happy, moral children, and dare I say it….to take care of my husband and ensure that he has a good, happy life. I do it becuase I care, and because I love those that I share a life with. With that being said, I don’t consider myself a hippy or anything of the sort, I’m just trying to live my life and have a bit of peace because there’s a great big world out there, and it’s loud, scary, and often brutal. This is my way of making it a little less horrible.
I hope Christina will read more extensively on this site, I also want to invite her to send us updates – possibly to publish them here as an example of how to make a home today in a world that encourages homelessness.
I’d like Christina to keep visiting us, too. My wife has a lot of things to say about the practical freedom she enjoys, and the intelligence it requires to do the things she does every day for me and our children. (She also makes jam; I pick the wild berries, almost 40 gallons of them last summer, and yes, that is gallons, not quarts, of blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, gooseberries, lingonberries, strawberries, and cranberries, and she makes them into the best jam that anybody’s ever tasted.) I have my own special reason too, and that’s that I’ve taken to studying Welsh, and have just read the New Testament in the Welsh translation contemporaneous with the KJV. The trouble is, I can’t get my hands on more Welsh literature, or the rest of the Welsh Bible.
I can’t believe someone actually bothered to read my post! I’m so glad I wasn’t mocked for wanting to ensure a nice life for my husband…because I can tell you, it gets me a lot of grief from friends and family. But, I digress, thank you all for being so sweet, and I would like to say that I bookmarked this site in my favourites (yeah, I spelled it the British way…) as soon as I made that post. I totally love this site, and I thank you all for putting up such wonderful things to read and think over. It’s always a pleasure to read something that someone has clearly put effort and thought into writing.
Nice, thanks for bringing this forward, Professor.
Christina, I agree with you, this is a great site – correction – this site has excellent contributors. Seems as close as we’ll get to Aquinas at a quodlibet – not that there are any of his stature here, there, anywhere, but that it takes a good bit of vinegar to post in a public forum. Often didactic content, at that. And long form. With footnotes.
Many American Mormons live this way, including my wife and I, with our five children and three chickens in our suburban home. My sense is that with the renewed emphasis on foodism, quality, and intimacy, the pendulum has been swinging back to traditional roles.
Christina,
You’re famous! http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/strange-new-respect-domesticity/
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