Working women

 

Yes there is life after work.

At last!

This is my third week, but only my second week of being in the classroom and I usually come home so tired I collapse in my chair for the rest of the afternoon,  but yesterday, for the first time, I had the urge to do something else.

About four thirty I rearranged my bedroom and put the keyboard in the living room where I can leave everything set up for playing. I moved the bed and switched it with my big recliner in the bedroom, then slid all the other furniture into better spots too. I like it. I always like it when I first rearrange furniture.

Today my muscles are tired, but otherwise I feel better than yesterday when I was having doubts about this job. 

Doubts are okay, but not having this job is not an option. I need it and I'm not likely to find anything else as perfect for me, so I have to go in with a positive attitude and make it work.

I remember the farm women who would move into town for the winter when I was a child. They needed paying work and would come work for my grandmother cleaning or working in the kitchen. It was hard work involving lots of stairs and being on their feet for eight hours. I wonder how old they really were? They seemed ancient to me at the time.

I remember the hair nets they wore and the missing teeth in their mouths, but I also remember their smiles and how kind they were to me when I would tag around behind them. Now I know that when they went home they still had to take care of their homes and their husbands. There was no sitting down at the computer in those days. 

They had names like Violet or Millie that made them sound like the girls they once were, but when I knew them they were white haired with sun browned wrinkled faces and soft voices. In the summer they cleaned their own homes and cooked big meals for the men in the fields while working in their gardens and hanging out their laundry on clotheslines and rearing their children. They killed chickens and milked cows and made biscuits and still found time for church on Sunday morning and Wednesday nights.

My life is so much easier. I need to remember that.