Scrubbing

Only in artwork and staged sets.

To other wives and mothers, in between scrubbing pots and pants and little peanuts:

Only in our "new is best" culture would scrubbing and cooking and baking and the myriad of daily tasks seem onerous. Why? Because immediately upon unwrapping whatever product/item/idea, life smacks it in all of its natural aging and wear and grossness, and then we spend our time trying to keep it livable (or make it palatable, as kitchen arts go). Our products and homes and recipes never look perfect (even if they seemingly did the first time--remodeled bathrooms come to mind). And so we bemoan all the work it takes to produce livability, when much of what we do while we live barely evokes notice, let alone grumpiness. Case in point: we don't normally lament our need to imbibe several times a day; we don't even think about using the can or relieving ourselves as anything but a matter of course. When did taking care of our homes, the very spheres that we inhabit, become things of burden? We should reject the deceptive "new is best" mentality, but we should also guard against falling into the trap of thinking that our duties as mothers and keepers of the hearth are somehow meritorious by their very repetition and drudgery. Yes, they are. But not because we have made them so. They are because God deems serving the hungry and the thirsty and the naked so, and because He served and serves us so infinitely every moment that we breathe.