"Do you work?" I'm working on framing a clever response to that question. "Do I look like a bag lady or something?" Come to think of it, I do present a rather disheveled appearance at times, so my own responsive query might invite further insult. I better dig deeper.My day begins at 6:00 a.m., give or take an hour. I'm the dietician and the cook and the maid. I'm the laundress, librarian, and lamp duster. I am the seamstress, the sale shopper, and the settler of sibling disputes. I'm the official correspondent to the folks back home in Kansas City, and keeper of the birthday card file. I teach the children manners, do taxes, and take out the trash.
I brush hair for kids and dogs and brush aside my coupon clipping in exchange for a game of Candyland. I correct spelling errors, drill math facts, and coach lisping tongues toward a crisper "s".
Sometimes I picture myself as a Velcro strip and the children as fuzz.
I help fillet fresh fish and pluck pheasant feathers. I hold ladders and nails, and held my tongue when my husband called me away from coffee with friends to help hogtie a goat.
I give haircuts, bandage boo-boos, and craft creative gifts. I plant peas and pansies, peel potatoes, scrub the tub, and I even washed my windows last spring.
"Do you work?" Around 8:30 each night I die, as it were, and I figure that says something of the day's activities. This is not the exhaustion born of viewing too many soap operas or talk shows. It's not the fatigue of a taxing bridge game or one set too many of tennis. I feel very much like I've been doing "the 'W' word"....and plenty of it.
I reckon it's an honest question and deserves a gracious response:
"Do you work?"
"No, I'm just a homemaker."
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