For Women Her Way Of Doing Things

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 286, 3 December 1938, Page 5 (Supplement)

For Women Her Way Of Doing Things

I 1 is not for nothing that women 1 are ordered away from their homes so that they shall get rest. Getting a woman in" is not the same thing. On the "Surface it may appear so, but in practice it is not. Mrs. Smith explained it to me. "I suppose I'm a fool." she said, "but I can't rest at home. We set that old ladv wo have always had - Mrs. Murphv but she worries me ~iore than doing the work myself Jack can't understll 11(1." Her husband laughed, she said, because she worried about the potato masher. VV hen 1 mash the potatoes fur dinner," she told me. not far off tear* because of her own folly. "1 always put it straight, under the cold tap. and wash •he potatoes off it while thev come off easily. Hut Mrs. Murphy sticks it up oil the rack above the stove. I listen tor her movements, ami as sure as e;><r> I hear her strain the potatoes, put the pot in the sink, mash vigorotslv, put the pot on the stove again, and the masher on the lack. I lie there and sweat. I know that the lire is baking the potatoes on to the pot and that

the masher is getting harder and harder to wash. I haven t jjot to wash it, but that makes no difference. It is not my way, it is a foolish way, and it worries me. Am I crazy?'' I smiled. 1 hus encouraged, she went on earnestly: '"Mrs. Murphv has another trick that worries me. She puts the electric kettle on to make me tea, and lets it boil over. If she did it once a week 1 could forgive her. Hut she does it every time she puts it on. 1 lie and listen for the ' .. I

By KM.K.

noise it makes, and then I hear it bubbling all over the wall if it happens to lie turned that way. N'ot that she is not a good woman. She is. She would look after me and any of mv family as if we were her own kitli and kin, 1 suppose I have'become unpliablc with the years, she said, apologetically, on should teii iier," 1 suggested". "I ell her? I suppose she lias been coming to us for 1"> years and for the first ten I told her every night about the potato masher, always hoping she would learn. At last I gave up hope, and took up the vegetables myself."

We were having tea while Mrs. Smith told me how tired she was. I could see it in the lines round her eyes. She worked too hard. I was telling her; was too much a slave to her house. "What gets me about my silliness," she said, "is that the things that worry me are so utterly trivial. I know just where they belong in the scheme of things, and yet when I hear the masher going up on the rack it means more to me than knowledge that a few thousand miles away, people are dying in agony on battlefields." I agreed with her that she should go away to get rest. She needed it badly enough. "I don't care then," she said. "But while I am in hearing of the kitchen, I worry. One night recently—l was ordered to bed for a month: strictly, unconditionally to bed —I could stand it no longer. I heard the potato ritual and it mounted to such proportions that I went into the kitchen, fuming and red in the face. I found what 1 expected to find, ami two cups and a basin that Mrs. Murphy had mixed thickening in also on the* rack, the flour baking hard on to them. I washed them. Then 1 looked behind the pastry board, where I knew she would never bother to clean, and dust was thick on the floor. 1 went to the safe, and found what 1 expected to find there—eight little jam

and butter dishes with tiny bits of jam and butter on, and spoons in each of the jam dishes. I washed those. When Jack came home I was on my knees, my dressing gown pinned up round me, scrubbing the - kitchen floor. I had cleaned out the cupboards, and broken Mrs. Murphy's heart. The doctor came the next day and found that I was so ill —blood pressure soaring and a niimber of other foolish things wrong with me —that he sent me off to hospital. And I knew all the time that all I needed was rest from the anxiety I suffered over the potato masher." I laughed, but I understood. A woman cannot rest at home. It is not the work she lias to rto, but the habit she has formed of being possessed by her possessions. If for 20 years—or 20 months — she has hung the blue cups on the first, second and third nails, she believes that there would he a eastrophe if they were reversed by some desecrating hand. If the washing has always been sent away on Tuesdays, it must go on being sent 011 Tuesdays to avert disaster. Nerves, you say, sneering, or call it a long name that has the same meaning. But you are only half right. The ether half is hidden from you —a secret shared by the housewife and her possessions. What hold she and they have on each other we shall never know, but we know that it is a very real one.