rudderless

Radical Preserves

I just finished reading this piece by Tabitha Tucker, a friend of a blog-friend, about her full-time parenting being a radical, political act. And it is. That’s the part that keeps me interested. Just like choosing the bike makes a statement, choosing to be home is a choice that we didn’t happen upon. We actively decided to have a parent at home with our ladies. Some days it’s mind-numbing, some days it’s wicked hard, but every day it’s a conscious decision we make to slow down our lives and the lives of our children.

Tabitha’s essay points out all of her small radical acts. “Radical” laundry on her clothesline, gardening, preserving food, cooking, walking, mending clothing. Rosy has a radical bum, I have radical boobs. Sophie is about to embark on a radical homeschool journey. We started our radical journey when we moved onto our boat. Fewer possessions, a smaller footprint, freedom to relocate. We have tried to keep ourselves as “small” as possible while living ashore- biking, breastfeeding, cloth diapering, eating fresh and local as often as we can, all of it is part of the picture. We are itching to pare down again and as soon as the boat is liveable, will be back in our tiny abode.

But what makes me laugh about the larger “Slow” movement- and it has become one, a movement to slow down, buy less, eat better, and stick it to corporate banality; what I love about it is that it draws upon the skills my grandmother and great-grandmother held dear. They were considered imprisoned by their laundry, their cooking, and their child-rearing. That is exactly the stuff we’re taking back. We want to simplify but we also want to work harder. I don’t buy jam anymore. I make it. Rather than buy paper towels, I use rags and take the time to hang them to dry. I want my kids to get the chicken pox, and I’m happy to spend the time to take care of them while they’re sick. John and I design our little homestead in Maine on a daily basis, with its chickens and maybe a goat, a big garden, and a root cellar.

It’s conversations like these that make me want to do a bit of time-traveling. Would my great-grandmother have a good laugh? Would she say, “Be careful what you wish for.” Or would she trade her relatively “hard” life for this one filled with BPA-lined cans and smog and the fear of global warming (and it is something I truly fear).

What I wish she would say, and something I’ll say when I’m the great-grandmother, is what Tabitha ends her piece with, “I’m not sure, but I do know that if I don’t do it, if I don’t seek to be the change I wish to see in the world, there is no hope.”

It is what gets me through the day. Being the change. Being the mom. It keeps me challenged and make me feel a little bit better about all of it.