LEARNING AND HELPING
LEARNING AND HELPING
"She was one of those persons who possess, as their
exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement.
It is a kind of natural magic that enables these
favoured ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of
things around them; and particularly to give a look
of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for
however brief a period, may happen to be their home."
--_Hawthorne_
ONE would like to take the person Hawthorne is describing on a camping
party or a picnic. She would be equally agreeable to stay at home with,
or to find at home when one came in. It is a sign that there is such a
person in a house when the whole family have to know where "Mother" is,
as soon as they get inside the front door. Sometimes it is a sister or
an aunt, sometimes a father, who has to be found before one can settle
down, but whatever the relationship, it is the person who makes us feel
at home.
It is odd, is it not, the way we are always saying that we "feel
at home," or "not at home," or "homesick," or that something is
"homelike"? What do we mean by it, anyway? When people try to tell
what home is, they usually make poor work of it. It is not in the
least necessary to tell what it is; a home is a thing to have, not to
talk about. All I want to say here is that homes are not houses and
furniture, but people. There is an Indian proverb which says, "The
hearth is not a stone but a woman." Fathers and brothers have their own
share in making their homes, but mothers and daughters are more apt to
take care of their homes and stay in them. So it has come to be that
making homes is a special and particular work of women.
Whatever work a girl may hope to do in the future, she will live
somewhere, and whatever that somewhere is like, it should be as
homelike as she can make it. This is partly on account of a good many
people she will find who need a little pleasantness and comfort given
to them, and partly because she will not be comfortable and happy
herself unless she has something homelike about her. This is why it is
a great advantage to be a woman; what power we have to make homes, we
carry with us. Hawthorne says that a woman, who is especially gifted in
this way, can make a home of any place, even though she is there but a
few hours--a hotel bedroom, for instance. The Indian proverb, however,
goes even further. It says, not that a woman can make a home, but that
she _is_ a home. That is, we should have the power to make people feel
at home wherever _we_ are.
Most women, though, have something more to make a home out of than
themselves. They have little houses or big houses to keep. When they
begin to do this they find themselves very glad of all the cleverness,
and learning and experience which they can gather. It is much easier to
do some of this gathering before one has a house of one's own, and ways
of doing it lie all round us, often unrealized and unused.
Through most of our teens, school is the principal thing. Whether we
are interested in it or not, it is then our recognized occupation.
Nowadays, there are opportunities in many schools to learn things
helpful in housekeeping. They are not only to be found in cooking
and sewing classes. Chemistry and physics, which may one or other of
them be required of you for college entrance examinations, are also
of excellent service in housekeeping. Some of you will be in schools
where you can choose to some extent what courses you take. In that
case, do not say chemistry is "messy," and physics is "too hard," but
just tussle with them for the sake of your home-making, as a boy would
who knew he was to be a physician or an engineer. I hardly dare to
mention it, but detested arithmetic, learned in school, often afterward
saves the peace of a household and the happiness of the housekeeper.
Personally, I have found what geometry I know useful on many unexpected
occasions. But to turn to a more agreeable subject, I can recommend any
course in light carpentry, for you will almost surely like it if you
try it, and no one thing is more useful in a house--except perhaps,
arithmetic.
If, on the contrary, you are in a school where there are no choices,
or if you are obliged to narrow down to the requirements of a college
entrance examination, the only thing to do is to keep in mind the
things which will be especially useful to you--physical sciences,
mathematics, manual training, domestic science; study some of them if
you can, and, besides that, see what you can learn at home. I do not
mean that the other things which you study at school are not useful in
home-making; they are. It is just that certain things are part of the
special training for this work, and those named above are the ones more
usually taught in schools.
We turn now to the preparation which can be given to us, and which
we give ourselves, at home. Ideally, this is the place to learn
home-making.
If we have a home, whether it is a palace or a room in a tenement, some
one in it "keeps house." If that person is one's mother, then is one
the normal and fortunate person who learns in the normal and fortunate
way, from being with her. If she does some of the work of the house
herself, and we help her, we learn far more than we realize until some
moment of emergency comes and we find that our eyes, and hands, and
noses, and muscles are trained for service.
If your mother merely directs the affairs of her house and the details
are carried out by others, watch how she does it, for this may be the
way in which you will keep house; and persuade her to let you try it,
sometime when she is to be absent. In this case there will be some one
else in the house from whom you will need to take a few lessons. It
will perhaps be a housekeeper, or a very trusted maid. Make friends
with her and ask her questions. If she sees you want to learn and not
to criticize she will become the most delighted, flattering teacher you
ever dreamed of.
If your mother does part or all of the housework it will probably be
one of your appointed duties to assist her. If it should happen, as
is sometimes the case, that you are not required to help with the
housework, then be a woman, and not a lap dog, and ask to help. In the
proper story-book, a mother's response to such a request would be an
affectionate answer and much patient teaching, and I think, in many,
many cases, that is the reply a daughter does receive. But just suppose
that you are one of the other cases. I can imagine a variety of answers
you might get to "May I help?" One of them might be, "Go out of the
kitchen, you'll spoil your clothes"; and others might be, "Don't bother
me, I'm busy," or "Don't interrupt," or, "I'd rather do it myself than
put up with your clumsiness."
The first thing to do when one gets an answer like this is to go
away. The second is according to temperament; if you feel hurt and
discouraged, then, try not to, or if you feel that your responsibility
is ended by the refusal of your offer, then don't think that; it
isn't true. Think rather, that you may have offered just at the wrong
moment--you will find when you begin to keep house yourself that there
are a good many wrong moments--or that there may have been some simpler
thing you could have done which would have been a greater help. We
might also consider the possibility that our way of helping has not
been quite agreeable on some former occasion. Perhaps, alas, we may be
clumsy, or we may be slow, or we may be more nuisance than help just
at first. After we have gone away and thought ourselves quiet, then we
must do that most difficult and heroic of things--try again to help the
person by whom we have been rebuffed.
You see I speak entirely of your side in this matter. That is because
neither you nor I may be permitted to pass judgment on your mother.
She is like some one about whom we have read a short story, we only
know one little period of her life and only a few of her thoughts and
feelings even then. She must always remain a bit of a mystery to us,
because we can never know very much about what happened before we were
born.
There is a thing which makes helping mothers difficult, that one must
guard oneself against, especially because it is so natural and so
insidious. It is especially a snare when we learn about housekeeping
outside of our homes, though it very frequently lies in wait for us
anyway. It is the desire to reform our homes and our mothers, and
that instantly. I venture to say that the trouble with this lies in
the _instantly_. The ways you are taught at school may be better than
mother's ways; but, on the contrary, mother's ways may be the result of
practical experience, and they may be an adaptation to the practical
needs and tastes of her family. It may be that the things you learn are
better adapted to your own generation and your own future housekeeping
than they are to your parents' tastes and needs. You are the future,
but remember that your parents are the past, without which you would
never have been. There is this also to consider, that as we grow older,
we grow toward orthodoxy. We place our faith in the "new thing" of the
hour, and in a little while, find that it was proved impracticable ten
centuries ago. While we are deciding that the old people we know are
narrow-minded old fogies, behold, some girl or boy tells us that the
reason we do not believe in their theory of the universe is because we
are "old-fashioned." To you, young, thoughtful, and alive, belongs the
belief that you are born to make the world better; and this is true.
Not, however, by tearing down is this accomplished, but by building
up. And the building is done by laying in a lifetime one small stone
in the structure, ages old, which has its foundations in the deeps of
the universe, and upon whose finished spires shall shine the glory of
Heaven.
But there--it is of some practical ways of helping mother, and thereby
learning housekeeping, that I wish to speak just now. They belong to
the class of things called little services, but I can assure you, they
are great, in tact, and helpfulness and love. They are homely; but they
are just the sort of things angels would like to do. Dusting is one
of them, the little everyday dusting which makes such a difference in
the tidiness of the house, and perhaps takes five minutes, or less,
to a room. With this goes taking up crumbs in the dining room, with
a sweeper or dustpan and brush, and arranging flowers and watering
plants. Tidying means removing dirt and litter, and putting each
thing in the place where it belongs. Tidiness is not a housekeeper's
superstition; it is a mechanical device for invoking the spirit of
restfulness.
Another homely thing always needing to be done is mending. It is, by
nature, incidental work, and therefore it is especially grateful to
the housekeeper to have it done by an incidental helper. I do not mean
merely darning stockings and sewing on buttons though that is the
larger part of it, but also, mending which is done with hammer and
tacks, or glue, or perhaps a varnish brush. I mean all those odd jobs
which pursue the busy housewife in the hours when she ought to rest.
Get your mother to write a list of these odd jobs on her memorandum
pad, as she sees or thinks of them during the day, then see how many
of them you can find a way to do.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
Tidying]
If your household does not include a waitress, there is a class of
small services which need to be done before each meal. One is not quite
so sure to be at home at meal times, as if one were a boy, but one can
arrange to be. Certain things are needed on the table which come from
the refrigerator or the cellar, cool things which should be put on at
the last moment. The cook has already fifty things to do at the last
moment, and few things relieve her more than to know that she need not
think of the table until she puts the meal upon it. I saw a girl, once,
looking at the dining-room table, and tapping out some sort of rhythm
with four finger-tips against her cheek. She owned up that she was
saying to herself, "Bread, butter, milk and water"--four things which
she had made it her business to see on the table before each meal.
Sometimes there were jelly and pickles and other relishes to put on,
but these four, which she counted off on her fingers and her cheek,
were the essentials.
Wiping and putting away the dishes is a small service which one can do
often and acceptably. It is elsewhere described, but is also mentioned
here because it belongs to this list of opportunities.
If your mother, or whoever does the cooking in your house, likes to be
helped with it, there will be many little things which you can do, like
beating eggs for instance, or shelling peas. No one can tell you what
they are, though, except the person who is cooking.
How many, and which of these small services you are able to do, depend
on how long your school hours are, and on what sort of health you have,
and on how much of the housework is done by the family. It is not fatal
if you do not do any of them, provided your reason is not laziness or
selfishness.
There is another group of small things, helpful, but more personal
to yourself, which you are less likely to be prevented from doing.
You probably have a room, or half a one, and a closet, and bureau
drawers, and certainly clothes, which are your own. Possession means
responsibility. If we find this sharp-cornered foundation-stone of
truth in the depths of our own bureau drawers, it is less likely to
fall heavily on us later on. Our own things and the places in which
they are kept should be our own care, and not another's.
It may not be your business to do the periodical sweeping in your room,
but the daily dusting and tidying the household authorities will be
glad to have you do.
You cannot find a better way to learn to make beds than to make your
own, for in that case you get the benefit of the insufficient airing or
the crease, or the crumb, which you have let go. If, for some reason,
you cannot make your bed every day, try to do it on Sunday. It is a
custom of gentleness from one woman to another.
Keeping a room in order is accomplished by the same means that any
tidiness is brought about, that is, by having a place for things and
seeing that they are there. The things that most girls want in their
rooms are apt to be hard to keep in order. They are things which our
heartless elders call "trash." I would not undertake to say what a
girl's room should or should not contain, but I would ask her not
to have so many things that they are either never neat or else a
tormenting care; not to hang things on her walls which are vulgar or
silly; and not to leave her clothes and little adornments for other
people to put away. Keeping one's own possessions in order is a
reasonable service to others, and one of the natural, gradual ways of
learning home-making.
Will you turn over a few pages and read the suggestions about the
fittings and care of closets you will find in the chapter on upstairs
work? Bureau drawers, however, are not mentioned elsewhere than here,
for I consider them the private property of individuals, to be cared
for by their owners and not to be intruded upon by others except in
emergency. Articles put in drawers should be classified as far as
possible, and things used least often should be put in drawers least
easy to get at. Suppose, for instance, a bureau has four drawers, the
lowest is probably deepest and requires stooping to open it. In it can
go best waists, and sashes, and girdles, and scarfs, and fluffy objects
which should lie loosely. In the third drawer underclothes might be
put; to be folded and packed close does not hurt them. As they are
things which go into the wash, they should be worn in rotation, and
this is accomplished without thought or trouble if we pile all the
garments of the same kind together and always put the newly washed
ones on the top or the bottom of the pile, and take the ones we are to
wear from the opposite place. It takes a great many troublesome words
to describe this action, which is very simple, and almost immediately
becomes mechanical. In the second drawer of this possible bureau might
go collars, and handkerchiefs, and gloves, and ties, and things which
must be kept uncrumpled. If one has ample room, pretty boxes are good
to keep these things in, and they make for neatness. If one must
economize space, it is better to have some squares of silk, or pretty
coloured linen or silkoline in which one's possessions can be laid
flat, and then the four corners of the wrapper folded over upon them.
I have found these more convenient to get into and more easily washed
than regular veil and necktie and glove cases.
The top drawer is the one which locks most securely, because it is
under the top of the bureau, instead of under another drawer which
might be removed. It is therefore the one in which people usually
keep the things which they especially value, and their pocketbooks or
handbags. If a part of the top drawer is set apart for the collars,
ties, handkerchiefs, hair ribbons and belts which are in immediate use,
it will assist immensely to keep a room and bureau top neat. One does
not wish to put things, which have been worn, away with things which
are perfectly fresh, and one wants the belt and ribbons which one wears
for two or three days in succession close at hand. If they are folded
or rolled up to keep them shapely, and put in a space in the top drawer
which has been chosen for the purpose, time and tidying will be saved.
The space will need emptying out frequently, but that can be done on
those Saturdays when one is seized with a sudden clearing-up fit.
Care of our clothes is not directly related to housekeeping--it is
only a collateral relation. A neat house, however, is marred if the
housekeeper herself is untidy. For our immediate purpose, though, the
point is, that the habit of caring for our clothes, and the deftness
and inventiveness which such care requires, are qualities constantly
useful in housekeeping. I met a woman once, who boasted that she did
not know how to hold a needle, but give her a hammer and nails and she
could do anything. I happened to see her later with a hammer and nails,
and she was clutching the hammer close to the head, and pounding in
nails with more disregard for the help of leverage, than if she had
been a cave-woman pounding a stake with a stone. Some people can hammer
who cannot sew; and some people can sew who cannot hammer; some people
can do neither, and some people can do both. But the fact remains that
if we can use our hands and heads cleverly for one thing, we have a
better chance of using them cleverly for another; and blacking shoes,
and binding skirts, and mending stockings, and putting in ruchings,
are steps in an apprenticeship to more interesting and clever work.
Incidentally, too, we are giving ourselves that exquisite daintiness
which is one of a girl's charms.
At least one means of learning something of housekeeping lies open
to every creature. That means is an observing interest. We never
remain entirely ignorant of the things in which we are interested. We
gather ideas about them everywhere, and in the most unexpected and
unintentional places. If we sit at tables where the meals are carefully
served and well cooked, that privilege teaches many things about
serving and cooking. There is as much to learn in a cheap restaurant,
if we watch how things are done, and think out the reason for the
methods. If we watch a servant or a housewife doing work well, we need
never again be entirely ignorant of how to do that work. If we read a
book or hear a lecture, or overhear a scrap of talk in a street car
which contains a thought to help us or an unusual method to be tried,
it ought to stick to our memories as if magnetized. Think in the
morning that you want to know something about the cats in Thibet, and
almost surely before night, you will have heard or read something about
them. We know how often this is true of remote and unusual affairs; it
is infinitely more true of intimate daily ones. It is a great blessing;
a means of getting knowledge without other struggle than remembering
what we want to know. If it is not a royal road, it is at least a royal
by-path, to learning.
Some day, you will discover that you are "grown up," and if you have
learned what you could and helped when you could, you will discover,
too, that you have the gift and power to make a home--that you are a
woman, who is not a stone but a hearth.