Just thought I'd share this. Maybe you'll get a few laughs, and perhaps understand a bit more where I am coming from. This was written a long time ago......
Written November 1978
(This was written while
in Shelburne. It began as a letter to
friends back in the valley. I don’t
recall if it was sent in full or not. I
don’t know whether to keep it or not, but will omit the first part. I think it was supposed to funny, but
rereading it, I don’t find it so. I put
myself down quite a bit. I will just
continue with the part where we begin farming.)
Our married
life has had its share of ups and downs, oohs and ahs, darns and I’m
sorrys. For the first eight or so years
there were many changes. (We produced two off-spring and they always needed
changing.) We were like nomads, moving
constantly it seemed, living in a different house every year, and sometimes moving
twice in the same year. But, in the
spring of 1974 we finally settled in a place called Nicholsville, and here,
dear reader is where the madness begins to make its mark. It is here that I will begin a detailed
description of the “Mad Housewife.”
Our own
home, our first home, this little house was really home, finally! It meant comfort, warmth,
relaxation……Ha! Fat chance! In the first few days, even before we
actually had moved in, I had an inclination of just what was in store, and yet
I ignored the treacherous thoughts that kept nagging at me. This place is going to put calluses on your
hands, bruises on your legs, paint on your pants, and hurt in your heart. “I laughed it off. No way, I said to myself. This is heaven.
As we moved
in, a whole new way of life unfolded before me.
In fact a whole new Boss sprang out of the old one. It was as if the mountain air produced a
potion that transformed him into something alien. He began to spend every waking hour working
on the house, or outside. His job flying
became secondary, a means to an end, and in the changing process I began to
realize that I too was slipping gradually, and not without a fight, slipping
into the chasm with my husband. It was
then I knew that I had to be going completely mad! I feared I would never be normal again. To prove this thesis I will endeavor to
report certain activities that will support this mad theory.
We must go
back a few years, to the beginning, before we moved in. Back to the time when I found myself sitting
under a great maple tree, at the edge of what my husband called a garden, but
what appeared to me to be a farmers field.
Why, you might ask were we sitting under the tree? For one thing, we were cutting potatoes to
plant in “our garden”.
We cut, we
planted, and in so doing we sowed the seeds of country living into our
hearts. I became blood brother (or
sister) to a potato, by slicing my finger and allowing the juice from the
potato to mix with the blood from my finger, and I became mysteriously a part
of the land.
The day
came when we moved in. This followed
days of lugging our belongings up the mountain, and across a gravel road to our
new house. The moving was a miracle in
action, a truly weird sight to any onlookers, and I am sure to this day, that
it implanted serious doubts about our rationality, in the minds of our new
neighbours. Picture, if you can, a
beat-up, rusted old car, hauling a skidoo trailer loaded to the gills with
cartons, mattresses, furniture, and then add to that a following truck, an
ancient four wheel drive, ex paddy wagon, and also packed full of our
belongings.
Slowly, we
crawled from the married quarters at the base, where we had existed for a month
or two, along the middle mountain road, unpaved of course, then up the mountain
to the top road, which was about to be paved, and was therefore blanketed with
rocks the size of beach balls. I was
indeed a battle, weaving to avoid the larger rocks, and at the same time, not
swerving hard enough to upset all the cartons on the trailer. Finally, with beaded brow and racing pulse,
and overflowing kidneys, we arrived with the last load, and became residents in
our home.
We decided
that top priority was the garden, and I became a fast learner in the weed
course. I can remember closing my eyes
at night and seeing weeds, weeds of every kind.
I’d shake my head in a futile attempt to dispel the vision, and it would
be replaced with millions of carrot tops, popping through the ground. Oh how I ached for peaceful sleep, without
having to take the garden to bed with me.
Strange bedmates, strange indeed.
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