I’m No Ma Ingalls

When I first got to college I had one of two majors in mind – chemistry or chemical engineering. (Why I picked those majors, in particular, is a whole other why-I’m-not-so-smart story.)

I arrived on campus in the fall of 2001 with big, successful, break away, American dreams. After the tearful good-byes and the settling in, I went to a lecture hall to take a simple test. This test would tell us our aptitude for all things mechanical and spatial, for those of us who were undecided about engineering.

So I plunked myself down, took that test, and walked away with the confidence only an 18 year old who has never actually had to do anything of substance can possess. And of course I failed, and not just a little bit. Welcome to college and the foreshadowing of what the next four years will feel like.

Mechanically speaking I was a toddler, and yes, this story is getting to the agrarian point.

The other day held a blissfully sunny and cool (for Texas) afternoon. There was bean-picking and melon-collecting and finally planting that bed in the kitchen garden. And then there was the chicken wire.

As you may have read, Stewart has been out of commission for most of the last two months, off and on. He has done everything he can, within his physical limitations, to pick up part of the burden. But some of the “extras”, like planting the fall garden, were up to my discretion.

And in many ways it has been a wonderful process of learning and letting go. I get up, make breakfast, tend to the home and the children, get all other kitchen work out of the way, write during nap time, and then if there’s any time or energy left it goes towards whatever seems the most needful.

I’ve let go of my (already fairly low) expectations for homemaking. The garden is no longer something I have to get done, but rather gets tended to as the Lord allows. It has forced me to let go, to surrender, to submit my time in a way I haven’t in a while.

To just keep working for work’s sake.

But it’s also challenged me in ways that I’ve probably desperately needed for a long time. Look, I love to work the soil and plant seeds and nurture vegetables; but most of that work has been on Stewart. And it’s worked out really well that way because, frankly, he’s way better at it than I am, and I’m more needed elsewhere.

Now, for the first time maybe ever, there are things I’ve got to do myself if they’re going to get done at all. The results of these endeavors are nothing short of ridiculous.

Let me halt here before I get to the next scene and say that I know, as an American, what I’m supposed to say next. I’m supposed to say that I rose to the challenge, that I found out that I was made of tough stuff when the rubber met the road, that I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and showed that chicken wire fence who was boss.

That is not what I’m about to say. I failed at engineering, remember.

No, the scene was quite different. I’ve worked with chicken wire before, but mostly as an assistant to Stewart, or on a smaller scale. I realized just how low on the learning curve I was when I looked over at Stewart, resting in the shade, and asked the following question:

Me: “Should I put in some of those metal pokey thingies to hold it down?”

Him: (blank stare) “You mean wire?”

Me: “No, I mean those pointy upside down U-shaped staple-like things.”

Him: “You mean wire?”

Me: “Um, I don’t think we need them.”

I’d like to say he was impressed. I’d like to say he had all of the confidence in the world that in his absence I had it all under control. But I saw the look on his face underneath his straw hat, a look that was only punctuated with long blinks of disbelief.

At this point it was well past supper time, the boys were running around the kitchen garden, shooing the chickens away in one frantic way or another. Annabelle was covered in mud from her bonnet to her diaper, seemingly cursing in toddler at the chickens as she flailed her arms about.

And there I was standing next to the chicken wire fence, having completed my task, saying things like “Look, honey, I did it! (just don’t look too close)” and feeling like an utter failure. Because people who know how to do things don’t feel the need to say that they’ve actually done something.

He smiled and that was enough for me.

Yeah, I know I’m supposed to be all Laura Ingalls Wilder, Sarah Plain and Tall but let me tell you one more story to solidify my place outside of that company.

One day a snake was spotted in the chicken coop eating eggs. And so the gun was taken out because that thief was going to pay for it. I had Annabelle, still a babe, in one arm and was holding the .22 with the other. I’m sure it looked as though I was born to be a homesteading, baby-having, pie-making tough-as-nails kind of gal.

Stewart was coaxing him out of the coop and I said “Do you want me to blow him away?”

Again, people who really know how to use guns probably don’t say things like that.

And then I laughed, and then Stewart laughed, and he said “Why don’t you give me that thing before you hurt somebody.” Lest you think he was being patronizing or condescending, let me tell you that no one was more aware of the inaccuracy of that whole tough-as-nails picture than me.

It’s just not the truth.

With Stewart being unwell, these past two months have been a good opportunity for me to see just how I might be able to do on my own, to try to make it as a strong independent woman, to find out what I’m really made of.

Apparently it’s the weak, weepy, bottom-of-the-homestead-learning-curve kind of stuff.

Now, I know what you’re about to say because I’d say it too, as one American to another. But I don’t need that “don’t be so hard on yourself, you’re a tough cookie” bull crap.

No, let’s just be honest. I’m no Ma Ingalls.