| Dourte's Journal 2006 | |
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Housekeeping I think most folks come to a point in growing up when they start to consider their own home, or at least their own space. For me, it was in High School. I had a pretty fair and firm idea of what I wanted for my "eventual future" about the time I started taking Home Economics in the early 1970's. My first "standard" for my living style was "Good Housekeeping" Magazine. The "Good Housekeeping Seal" meant a great deal to me. I trusted it and looked for it. I was usually satisfied, although when I found something that worked for me, I stuck with it, whether it had the seal or not. While in High School, I came across a book in the library that explained how to keep and clean house. I haven't been able to find it again, in more than 30 years, but it was the best guide I've ever found. I read it from cover to cover several times and amazingly, SOME of the information stuck with me. What has perplexed me for several years is that with all this "background" of study and acceptance of standards and so on, I was such a CRUMMY housekeeper! I could NEVER seem attain (or at least maintain) the standards I believed in so absolutely. I sank to the point of misery and very nearly just gave up. I was ready to accept myself as a failure and that was that. News Fah-LASH! I am NOT a failure. I have NEVER been a failure. I knew that. I just didn't really believe it. A couple of things helped me start on the way out what felt like a whirlpool of despair. I was unfocused. It happens. Sometimes it happens because we are never really focused to start with. Other times, the light or picture changes and there goes the focus. And some of us lose a little more than our vision-related focus (yes, I wear bi-focals) as we age. What did I want to be when I grew up? At one time or another I wanted to be a nurse, a writer, a photographer, an airline attendant, a beauty consultant, a wife and a mother. Those goals narrowed down when I met my husband (we were in High School) and I decided I wanted to marry him (or nobody at all) and have a family. I met that goal. It took awhile. We met at age 16 yet didn't get married until we were 22. We started our family three years later. I had my babies in 1981, 1984 and 1987. The youngest is in college, the middle is a nanny, and the eldest is in the United States Marines. We've been married 28 years. I succeeded! Maybe I didn't always feel focused, but I'm proud because I believe now my children are successful. The focus changed gradually. I was never a "neat-nik" but I didn't really seem to be at a total loss for homemaking until the late 1990's. What changed? The needs of my family changed. They didn't need me in the home nearly as much as they grew older. They needed me active and involved in their lives outside our home. I'd been focused on home for a dozen years. Managing to re-focus, I was a Girl Scout leader and active in church. I was maintained most of my confidence up until the eldest started junior high school. That was about the time we moved back to the U.S. from Europe. Not only did I have three children who'd never really lived in the U.S., we ALL had culture shock! After ten and a half years overseas we returned with pre-teenagers to a commercially driven society and I found myself overloaded with expectations. Not only was I supposed to meet the challenges with style, grace and strength, I was supposed to improve as I did it! Then we moved to Alaska. We were financially overwhelmed when my husband retired from the military. I felt intellectually inadequate and on an emotional tightrope with three growing teenagers. It was painful blow to discover I wasn't prepared for gainful employment outside the home. I could earn minimum wage with lousy hours, but that was just about it. I was too exhausted to be involved in home and family life. It was a crisis. I just didn't see it like that at the time. All I saw was my failure to succeed as an ideal wife and mother. For more than two decades I nursed sick family members, wrote letters to the folks back home, wrote articles for church programs, things for Girl Scouts, the Officers Wive's club newspaper, a really sucky (but fun) novel that never got published, took LOADS of photographs, flew back and forth across the United States and the Atlantic Ocean several times, actually was a beauty consultant (before I had teenaged girls, even!) I was the wife of my high school sweetheart and mother of three REALLY wonderful kids. In one way or another, I was everything I'd ever wanted to be! Why was I failing?
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