Natalie Costanza-Chavez

Grace Notes #35

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Ruckus and Witchy Sharp Behavior

     A ruckus has risen – over a column I wrote. Granted, sometimes I expect ruckus-high reactions. I’ve even gone to bed internally wailing an anticipatory “Oooooo”, like a stomach-sick ghost, over the few sour emails I may get at dawn. But this was the most unlikely of ruckus raising columns. The night before it came out, I went to bed thinking “My pillow smells good.”

     Then the email started. Bemused, I wandered around with my coffee cup, muttering “Who’d a thunk it?”

     Who’d a thunk that my column about snapping at my son after he smashed the soft skin on the inside of my index finger into the counter edge would have made me the new, and I quote from a reader here, “Stepford Wife?”

     My finger was on the counter edge because I was in the middle of a do-over kitchen clean-up. My sons and their friends had already given it the old boy-try and done a sweet, age appropriate, woeful job. Thus the do-over.

     Lots of people had no problem with the column. But, what bothered the people who were clearly bothered? Here goes: I was cleaning up after boys. I was serving them, enabling them, doing for them. I was encouraging them to be “lazy parasites”, and “objectify” women. They were also bothered that I didn’t always talk nicely to my children and that I’d admitted I didn’t always want to be nice. And, the kicker, from Sri Lanka: I was culturally indoctrinated to serve and should get over it.

     Like all women, employed or not, mothers or not, single or partnered, I work. Much of the work I do is for other people. I love to serve. It is a big part of what I live for. On my best days, I do it well.  On my worst, I’m a witchy sharp burr who can’t do jack-apple for anyone. I take the days as they come.

     Still bemused, I email my girl friends, and the men I know who have made it to girl friend status: “What do you do for other people? – I want to hear the stuff you don’t own up to in public.”

     The first response I get is from a friend who goes to sleep with the lamp on each night, so her husband can come to bed later and read without guilt. This isn’t the only thing on her list. Many of the lists are pages long. Another woman helps her 12 year old clean his room when she knows he can do it himself. Another comes home after a full day of work as a welder – and puts a fresh flower in the bathroom.   

     One man brings coffee to his partner every morning, without fail, even if he went to bed angry with her the night before. Another irons sheets. The quirky responses go on and on. Each would cause you to ask “Really! You do that!?” But, you wouldn’t truly be surprised, because you do for your people, too.

     We serve each other. We clean, we fold, we putter, we pat, we teach. We wipe blood and worse, we cater to, tend to, hover over. We feed, we shore up, we cover those we love. And sometimes, out of our own base goodness, we cover those we don’t love, or don’t even know. Thank God.

     My sons are almost teens. When they come in from summer-long days, their Croc-wearing feet filthy, and brushed grey with leavings of foothills dust and asphalt stain, I sometimes let them off the hook for a full shower. But I implore them to wash their feet back into some semblance of clean.

     At times, they slump with exhaustion and “I-don’t-wanna” and, at times, I say “hop up.” On these nights they sit on a table in our laundry room waiting as I run warm water in the work-sink, foam my hands with soap, and wash each foot for them. I pat each dry, then rub lotion on bitten up, scratched up, bruised up boy-legs. I consider it a privilege. 

     We need more foot-washing going on around this world. Serving each other is worthy. Everybody knows it, even if they are having a whitchy sharp burr day.