I know everything is about gender equality these days. Whatever a man can do, a woman can do too. But I have a serious question. Why would they want to?
I grew up in a traditional large family. Mom, dad, 7 kids. Lest you forget, I’m the oldest. Dad worked hard while mom—-working no less hard—stayed home, cooking, cleaning and doing laundry without many of the time-saving conveniences we have today. It was a hard, full-time job for her. My memories of her are always either washing dishes or standing in front of the washing machine.
Girls did the inside work while the boys—at the time—just my dad and brother—did the outside work which also included the basement. Basically, the really un-fun stuff: taking out the trash, taking out the garbage (no disposals then), cleaning the basement, shoveling dog ****, mowing the lawn, raking leaves and shoveling snow.
We girls did the dishes. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was when you have a big family. Since the twins and I couldn’t work together without fighting, we each had to take a week at a time: setting the table, clearing the table, washing the dishes, scrubbing pots and pans (no non-stick back then and EVERYTHING stuck to those awful pans--there was no soaking allowed!), drying the dishes and putting them away for 3 meals a day. Okay, if it was during the school year that only meant dinner. It was a terrible job--it took more than an hour. Plus, even though you only had to do it once every three weeks, you would think that was easy. But it sure seemed like your turn rolled around awfully darn fast!!
Still, I would rather have had the girls job. That is still true today. There are just some things that boys should do and girls should not have to do. Like: cleaning out clogged drains, un-stopping nasty, stopped up toilets and a myriad of assorted outside related jobs which includes hauling wood. And that's what got me thinkin'.
I have never hauled wood in my life---until this week. Butch does a very good job of keeping our wood bin filled. But, he's sick. He got it from me, so I guess it's only fair that I should have to do his job. I've never had to do it before. It's a terrible job. I can only carry 3 logs at a time. That's a lot of heavy lifting and back and forth for this aging gal. I made 4 trips from the wood pile to the garage which is about 50 yards (okay, that's an exaggeration but it felt like that)! I made a final trip all the way in the house. I love a fire. I think I've mentioned before that we have one twice a day---morning and night. On the weekends, it's just about non-stop. That's a lot of wood hauling. When I was finished, I was kind of sweaty and my back hurt.
We have 'pink' and 'blue' jobs too - not to mention the purple ones that are a mix of the two!
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