The Art of Drudgery

It is four weeks into summer vacation and the drudgery of making my kids three meals a day, plus snacks, has set in.  All I do is fill the dishwasher, plan my next trip to Costco, and think of snarky answers to the question, "What's for dinner, mom?"

One evening I said, "You guys aren't hungry again.  Are you?  You just ate lunch and I am not even done cleaning up the kitchen."  My questions and declarations were met with blank stares.  "If you are hungry, figure it out because I am done."   My oldest just gave me that "tween look" and stalked off to be by himself.  My middle child chugged a Mason jar of sun tea (HE is the one I worry the most about.) and my youngest tore into flour tortillas.  

Luckily, the next day I came across this quote:

(I am sure you are wondering, as was I, who Logan Pearsall Smith was.  According to Wikipedia, he was an American-born British essayist and critic.  He was know for his aphorisms and epigrams and was an expert on 17th Century divines.  An expert!!!  I don't know about you, but Mr. Smith's career sounds like drudgery to me.  So his words are extra meaningful.)

This quote made me stop and think.  I have many vocations that involve drudgery.  I am a mom, a teacher, and a person.  (The later is something I often have to remind my students and children of.)  

Being a mother means making many, many meals.  Meals means washing out the disgusting crock pot and figuring out what to make.  Snack means cutting up countless watermelons and pineapples.  But.  I want my kids to eat real food, so I just do what needs to be done.  

Maybe if my students saw this "old school" cover they wouldn't want to read the book anymore.  

Being a teacher means I have to read the same books year after year because I know students respond to them.  I have to psyche myself up annually to read Walter Dean Meyer's Somewhere In the Darkness.  Every year students tell me it was their favorite book.  Personally I would love to leave the main characters, Jimmy and Crab, in the darkness and move on to something else.  But, I push through because I want my students to love books.  I want them to be able to answer the question, "What is  your favorite book."  

Being a person with many interests means lots and lots of drudgery.  If I want organic veggies and shasta daisies, I have to water and weed the gardens.  Writing blog posts means lots and lots of horrible first drafts and ideas that go nowhere.  (Like Part 2 of Rereading Anne of Green Gables.)    

Drudgery needs to be reframed.  I need to erase the vision of me wearing gray, mascara moons under my eyes, plodding from point A to point B and back again.  What if I think of drudgery as part of the process?  The process of raising healthy kids, literate students, and a creative lifestyle.

What do you think?

Prairie Eydie