Happy Birthday, Grandma
Nov. 2nd, 2011 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lonesparkIt's my grandma's birthday. We were really close and she was awesome, so I want to write a post about her. Of course the things in my brain are other things, but misogyny in geek culture and gendered toddler toys and other stuff will have to wait. Lacking significant inspiration I am going to mostly repost a comment I wrote at Confessions of a Former Conservative (if FC doesn't mind). It's about my grandma and why feel strongly that liking and respecting "women's work" and the people who do it and love it doesn't and mustn't continue into deciding it's the right thing for all women, or even any women who didn't choose it.
Here ya go:
"My maternal grandmother was a housewife/homemaker. She didn’t work outside the home after her husband came back from the war. She was the pastor’s wife, and she had a huge role in providing for her own family and moreso her church families for many decades. She taught many generations of women to sew, and knit, and quilt, and do…things…with rugs…and…stuff. I dunno; I’m not a fiber arts expert. She could and did cook meals for fifty people. She could and did bake pies that could have won awards, although I don’t know if she ever entered them in contests. Cakes and cookies and bread too. And roasts and stews and puddings and…She and her husband turned a hunting camp with no plumbing and no interior walls into a warm home where generations of people from around the world (every continent, no lie, though maybe that’s down to my hippie parents) loved to visit and celebrate.
She did not accomplish these things because she was a woman, or because these are the natural strengths of the womanly nature or because it was Biblically correct. There may be something to the fact that roles for women were proscribed and she could have used her talents in another way, but that’s just speculation. (She certainly didn’t view it that way, and I’m not the one who was working a crappy advertising job and praying for my husband to come back alive, so it’s probably irresponsible speculation. In any case, we all live in the world we get.) She became what I sometimes think of as the Platonic ideal of a Grandmother because she had goals and a plan and she majored in Home Economics. She worked with the love of her life to serve his churches as a team. She might have embraced the title of helpmeet, but they were also partners. They needed each other and they made each other great. Two people who loved each other and served Christ together, and then my grandmother going on without him for twenty more years. Distributing hugs and pies and mittens to her whole community. (I realize I have written all this and not even mentioned her gardening. There was that too.)
So, I loved and admired my grandmother, and I do agree that very often the work of running a household is really not appreciated as it should be. By feminists, sometimes, but more by society in general, and maybe modern society in particular. My grandmother valued that work and those skills, in part because she had to learn and practice them painstakingly as an adult, and she taught anyone who would learn. That was a huge gift to all the communities that knew her.
She also supported the kids and grandkids and our friends and acquaintances in becoming scientists and engineers and doctors and animators and advertisers and teachers and frustrated part-time musicians. She wanted every one of us to know the joy she knew in finding a vocation that really let us blossom and share our full selves with the world to God’s glory.
Saying the true role of woman is as queen of the home and crown of her husband is the opposite of that. It’s demanding that other people fit your idea of a joyful life. And the constant emphasis on submission would have earned my grandmother’s “perfect hatred” a la Psalm 139. She might not have agreed with the ways some feminists push back against it, but she and my grandfather pushed back in their own ways. A sign still hangs above the dining room table in the house they left that says, “The opinions expressed by the husband in this household are not necessarily those of the management.” It always seemed just funny and obvious to me, but now I can see some other functions it could have had."
Here ya go:
"My maternal grandmother was a housewife/homemaker. She didn’t work outside the home after her husband came back from the war. She was the pastor’s wife, and she had a huge role in providing for her own family and moreso her church families for many decades. She taught many generations of women to sew, and knit, and quilt, and do…things…with rugs…and…stuff. I dunno; I’m not a fiber arts expert. She could and did cook meals for fifty people. She could and did bake pies that could have won awards, although I don’t know if she ever entered them in contests. Cakes and cookies and bread too. And roasts and stews and puddings and…She and her husband turned a hunting camp with no plumbing and no interior walls into a warm home where generations of people from around the world (every continent, no lie, though maybe that’s down to my hippie parents) loved to visit and celebrate.
She did not accomplish these things because she was a woman, or because these are the natural strengths of the womanly nature or because it was Biblically correct. There may be something to the fact that roles for women were proscribed and she could have used her talents in another way, but that’s just speculation. (She certainly didn’t view it that way, and I’m not the one who was working a crappy advertising job and praying for my husband to come back alive, so it’s probably irresponsible speculation. In any case, we all live in the world we get.) She became what I sometimes think of as the Platonic ideal of a Grandmother because she had goals and a plan and she majored in Home Economics. She worked with the love of her life to serve his churches as a team. She might have embraced the title of helpmeet, but they were also partners. They needed each other and they made each other great. Two people who loved each other and served Christ together, and then my grandmother going on without him for twenty more years. Distributing hugs and pies and mittens to her whole community. (I realize I have written all this and not even mentioned her gardening. There was that too.)
So, I loved and admired my grandmother, and I do agree that very often the work of running a household is really not appreciated as it should be. By feminists, sometimes, but more by society in general, and maybe modern society in particular. My grandmother valued that work and those skills, in part because she had to learn and practice them painstakingly as an adult, and she taught anyone who would learn. That was a huge gift to all the communities that knew her.
She also supported the kids and grandkids and our friends and acquaintances in becoming scientists and engineers and doctors and animators and advertisers and teachers and frustrated part-time musicians. She wanted every one of us to know the joy she knew in finding a vocation that really let us blossom and share our full selves with the world to God’s glory.
Saying the true role of woman is as queen of the home and crown of her husband is the opposite of that. It’s demanding that other people fit your idea of a joyful life. And the constant emphasis on submission would have earned my grandmother’s “perfect hatred” a la Psalm 139. She might not have agreed with the ways some feminists push back against it, but she and my grandfather pushed back in their own ways. A sign still hangs above the dining room table in the house they left that says, “The opinions expressed by the husband in this household are not necessarily those of the management.” It always seemed just funny and obvious to me, but now I can see some other functions it could have had."
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 09:52 pm (UTC)