I’ve spent this week “batching it.” My much better half was tending to one of our real estate investments in Alabama while I assumed to role of taking care of our home and myself. It was a complete reversal of our former lives wherein I was primarily responsible for taking care of business while her job was to take care of our home (meaning mostly me). My felonious presupposition that, in this temporary reversal of roles, I was coming out on the easy side of this exchange brings to mind an old European folktale that reminds us to respect others hard work as much as we do our own…perhaps more.
Once upon a time there lived a man so unobservant and self-absorbed, he never thought his wife did anything right around the house. One evening, during hay-making season, he came home complaining that dinner wasn’t on the table, the baby was crying, and the milk cow had not been put in the barn.
“I work and work all day long,” he growled, “and you get to stay home and mind the house. I wish I had it so easy. I could surely get dinner ready on time, I’ll tell you that!”
“Dear love, don’t be so angry,” his wife replied. “Tomorrow let’s change our work. I’ll go out with the mowers and cut the hay, and you stay home and mind the house.”
The husband thought that a splendid idea. He doubted his wife would be up to the task of sowing hay and he knew his was the better end of the deal she was offering. “I could use a day off,” he said. “I’ll be through with all of your chores in an hour or two at the most, and then I’ll sleep the afternoon away.”
So early the next morning the wife put a scythe over her shoulder and trudged out to the hayfield with the other mowers. The husband sat on the porch sipping from a fresh cup of coffee thinking about the lesson doing his hard work all day was going to teach his mate. Then he got up to begin his housekeeping chores.
First, of all, he washed some clothes, and then he began to churn the butter. But after he churned awhile, he remembered he needed to hang the clothes out to dry. He went out to the yard, and had just finished hanging his shirts on the line when he saw the pig run into the kitchen.
So off he dashed to the kitchen to corral the pig, lest it upset the butter churn. But as soon as he got through the door, he saw the pig had already knocked the churn over. There it was, grunting and rooting in the cream, which was running all over the floor. The man became so wild with rage, he quite forgot about the shirts on the line, and ran at the pig as hard as he could.
He caught it, too, but it was so slippery from all the butter, it shot out of his arms and right through the door. The man raced into the yard, bound to catch that pig no matter what, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw his goat. It was standing right beneath the clothesline, chewing and chomping at every last shirt. So the man ran off the goat, and locked up the pig, and took what was left of the shirts off the line.
Then he went into the dairy and found enough cream to fill the churn again, and so he began, once more, to churn, for fresh butter they must have for dinner. When he had churned a bit, he remembered that their cow was still shut up in the barn, and had not had a mouthful to eat or a drop to drink all morning, though the sun was now high.
He thought it was too far to take her down to the meadow this late, so he decided to put her on top of the house, for the roof, you must know, was thatched with grass. The house lay next to a steep hill, and he thought if he lay a wide plank from the side of the hill to the roof, he could easily get the cow onto the roof.
But still he couldn’t leave the churn, for the baby was crawling around the floor of the room. “If I leave the churn,” he thought, “surely the child could upset it.”
So he put the churn on his back and went out with it. Then he thought he better water the cow before he put her on the roof, so he got a bucket to draw water out of the well. But as he stooped down at the brink of the well, the cream ran out of the churn, over his shoulders, down his back, and into the well!
Now it was approaching dinnertime, and he didn’t even have any butter yet. So as soon as he put the cow on the roof, he thought he’d best boil the porridge. He filled the pot with water, and hung it over the fire.
Once that was done, the man thought and began worrying about the cow on the roof. He was becoming increasingly concerned that she might fall of the roof and break her neck. So he climbed up on the roof to tie her up. He tied one end of the rope around the cow’s neck, and the other end he slipped down the chimney. Then he went back inside the house and tied the lose end around his waist. He had to make haste, for the water now began to boil in the pot, and he still had to grind the oatmeal.
So he began to grind away. But while he was hard at it, down fell the cow off the housetop after all, and as she fell she dragged the poor man up the chimney by the rope! There he stuck fast. And as for the cow, she hung halfway down the wall, swinging between heaven and earth, for she could neither get down or up.
Meanwhile the wife, who was out in the field, waited and waited for her husband to call her home for dinner. At last she thought she’d waited long enough and went home.
When she got there and saw the cow hanging in such an ugly way, she ran up and cut the rope with her scythe. But as soon as she did, down came her husband out of the chimney! So when she entered the kitchen, she found him standing on his head in the porridge pot.
“Welcome back,” he said, after she had fished him out. “I have something to say to you.”
He hugged her and kissed her and softly said, “I am so sorry.”
He never again wished to switch jobs and he never complained about how she did hers.
…and, by the way, welcome home, Darling! I sure missed you!
There is great power in a housewife. Do not disregard the feminine. – Adrienne Posey
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque