"What are you doing?" I yell up to my daughter's loft. No response. I climb a few rungs up her ladder until I spy her lying on her bed. She has in headphones and her Apple computer is on a split screen." What are you doing?" I mouth. What's the point of using my vocal chords when she's so tuned in or tuned out, depending on how one views the scenario.
"I'm multi-tasking, Mother," she replies exasperatedly, as she removes the ear buds. "I'm doing physics and watching 'The Office.' I need a pedi. Will you hand me the toenail polish?"
I climb down her ladder and return to the kitchen to finish peeling potatoes from my Mother's beef stew recipe. Oh--my Mother! Now there's a woman who multi-tasked before the words became the phrase du jour.
"It's time to get up!" Mom yanked the covers off my ten-year old body.
"It's 7 a.m. and summer," I pleaded. "Why do I smell roast beef and potatoes? I smell bacon too!" I was confused.
"Listen up," Mom instructed. "You missed breakfast. I'm going out to butcher chickens. You and your sister come over in 20 minutes to help pluck the feathers and clean up the mess. After that, come back inside and wash up. The roast for dinner is in the oven. Lower it to 250 degrees and clean up the breakfast dishes."
I grabbed my covers and curled up under them. "I can't clean up the mess!" "The mess" is code word for bloody chicken heads. I flashed back to when I was five years old. I wanted to help butcher chickens--until I learned what it meant. I witnessed Mom cutting the heads off my most recent pets. I ran around the blood-spattered ground collecting loose heads. My attempts to reattach them back onto jerking, almost lifeless chicken bodies was pretty much how you envision it. "But what are you doing today if I have to do all that?"
I got the look--then the speech. "I have to gut and cut up the chickens, while I water the garden. Then I need to pick sweet corn for canning, while I hoe weeds in the cornfield. After dinner (noon meal in the country), I'm going out to disk the field over north because your dad has to go to town for a cattle sale. Then we ALL are going to pick green beans before it gets dark so I can start canning them. Tonight, I'm doing some patching if I can fix the sewing machine. Your dad's overalls all have holes in them."
As I focus on peeling my potato, I realize why I never quite feel like I'm accomplishing enough. Often, when Mom made dinner, she was also baking a pie for the church potluck, figuring out when the calves needed weaning, and cutting a dress pattern for me that was laid out on the kitchen table.
My mother's resume forty years ago would have read something like this:
Job title:
Farmer
Farmer's Wife
Mother
Description of farmer:
Sitting on a tractor 6-10 hours a day, pulling an implement to plant, sweep, bale, cut, pick, disk, harvest, fertilize, or plow. This occurs between the hours of 6 am and 10 pm. Attempt to fix broken equipment to save time and money before calling a "real" mechanic.
Push hay up to the cattle twice a day. Vaccinate cattle. Castrate cattle. Deep fat fry items removed from castrated cattle for a Mountain Oyster fry. (Best to google this term if you are unfamiliar with it). Chase cattle back into their pen when they inevitably figure a way out. Assist cattle in giving birth. Ensure windmills are turning to generate water for cattle in the pasture. Butcher cattle, after they are shot and hung up to age for a few cold winter days. Cut up beef (formerly known as a steer that was formerly a bull before castration) with an electric saw, hand saw, and butcher knife into hamburger, steaks (T-bones, rib eyes, fillets, strips), roasts, stew meat. Wrap and freeze butchered meat.
Farmer's wife's job description: All of the above, plus fix three hot meals a day. Laundry. Raise four children. Clean house. Plant vegetable garden. Water, weed, and pick vegetable garden: lettuce, green onions, radishes and squash. Pick and can other vegetables--green and yellow beans and corn. Can whole tomatoes, but also make and can tomato juice, tomato soup, tomato sauce, and salsa. Pickle any or all of the following vegetables and fruit: watermelon, cucumbers, okra, string beans, and green tomatoes. Can fruit (obtained from outside sources): peaches, plums, apricots, and choke cherries. Make jams from above mentioned fruits. Can meat, which includes sausage, corn beef, and beef for bar-b-que.
Raise baby chickens that, oddly, get delivered from the unhappy mail man from his mail car. "Louise, get these damn 200 peeping chicks out of my back seat!" The sweet, chirping, yellow balls of fluff were delivered in cardboard boxes, with holes on the tops and sides, not running around free range in the back seat of his car. After two months of growth (and TLC from me), said chickens were then butchered with a freshly sharpened knife. Yell at younger daughter (yes, me) as she runs around collecting bloody heads, trying to perform a miracle. (After all, they were her pets for two months before they became "eat'in age.")****
****The author realizes there are two very similar paragraphs about her pet, headless chickens. She simply wants to instill the image into the reader's mind next time they take bite of their cou au vin. Forgive her if she's overstepped her boundaries.****
Gather eggs from surviving chickens. Make noodles due to excess of eggs. Drape the three-feet long noodles to dry on any available surface, such as spare bed and pool table in basement. Clean chicken coops of prolific chicken shit. Spread shit (fertilizer) in garden.
Grocery shop in town once a week (don't forget anything because you're not running 20 miles to pick up a gallon of milk). Delegate chores.
"Susan (older sister), you hang the clothes on the line and iron the Sunday shirts and dresses. Watch your baby brother."
"Tammy, you fold down clothes and clean the kitchen. Gather the eggs."
"Spencer (older brother), you're in the field today."
In unison, we retort," But what are you doing today if we have to do all that?"
"Mom! I need my nail polish," my daughter's voice jerks me back to the present.
Ahhh! Multi-tasking. Such a 21st century concept, isn't it?
