(The Clothes-Line, Helen Allingham)
For a girl who is guilty of romanticizing the past and envying its citizens, this article proved interesting and insightful. Comical, too, for my attempts to imagine my American foremothers in modern supermarkets was amusing!
"We have read them all, the organic, no colarisation, 'hemp-your-own-dress' websites that leave us in awe. And then we realize that people used to do this as a matter of fact. People ate what they grew and raised. We sometimes seem to have trouble getting a wholesome dinner on the table every evening, and our gardening attempts ... well, let's just say that some people are more successful than others. . . .
"Put your pioneer woman in our modern supermarket again and try to tell her that we can't just buy anything named "bread," but that we need to read the labels to know what is actually in it. Or that "whole wheat" doesn't really mean whole wheat, and that those green beans are so sodium covered that it's almost not worth it. Then there is the organic, which really just means that it was grown the way she would have grown it, but is so expensive that you can only afford certain items and then you should prioritize ... never mind. She would star at you as if you com from another planet and wonder how you remember it all. But we do. Or we try. As they tried. . . .
"Let us enjoy the stories of our pioneer mothers. Let us admire what they have done for us. Let us learn form the wise among them, as there are wise women called forth to teach the young in any generation. And the let's put our shoulders under our own workload without comparing it to another's. . . . And next time we hear that sly voice whispering inside us, 'You will never live up to what they did,' let us joyfully answer, 'No pioneer woman ever stepped on a Lego' and go back to our work."
'Tis true, I know, but why do their tasks seem so much more bearable? The grass is always greener, isn't it? ;-)
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