cornvillenutmeg

Purpose

I am a househusband.  When I was twenty-two, I was an actor. I drove away from that when I was twenty-five.  By the time I was twenty-six, I was a teacher. I taught English and Drama for the next 37 years.  Now I’m a househusband. 

Both my wife and I are retired. For more years than I taught, Edie, my wife, taught college-level Psychology and had her own clinical practice. By 2011 and retired, we had moved from the Northwest Corner of Connecticut to Arizona.  We live in Sedona. I think it was in Sedona that I noticed I was if not fully, at least very, involved in house husbanding.

I do the laundry, make the bed, do the cooking, and take care of plants, inside and out.  In Arizona, even Northern Arizona, caring for plants is a challenge on account of the ever-present sun, ten out of twelve months of 90º plus degree heat, and non-existent humidity.  Cacti grow well, but they’re not inviting the way a marigold is, and they have no scent I can detect although it’s possible due to my advanced age that my sense of smell is deteriorating.

Here’s how househusband on the one hand and actor or teacher on the other are different.  Purpose, as in sense of purpose.  This is not something I ever thought as either actor or teacher.  Likely the condition was self-evident thus entirely unconscious. Not until now have I begun thinking about Purpose/Sense of Purpose.

Edie thinks about it, too. Like all good teachers, her students were her Purpose, more so her patients. Since moving, I see the way she has embraced bridge, while very different, as purpose full.

When we lived in the Northwest Corner, we belonged to the local and self-important country club.  During the summer, each Thursday night, people gathered for supper and to play bridge, social bridge.  I played with her then, but when we moved to Arizona, she began to play Contract Bridge and to earn points of many hues. Today she is a Ruby Life Master and well on her way to the next Life Master tier.

Contract Bridge is tension-ridden. Contract Bridge players abide annoyance, in both being annoyed with as well as annoying others. I myself am not indifferent to annoyance. In fact, I’m often annoyed, but I’m not indifferent to others being annoyed with me, not do I pretend otherwise. I never keep it a secret. When I was an actor and teacher, I knew being annoyed was part of the landscape. I learned to tolerate it, but now I’m retired; I am not obligated to tolerate pretty much anything save medical care. For useless information purposes only, rudeness is at the top of my list.

Here’s what is lacking about house-husbanding: Purpose. I don’t mean at all that cooking and laundering is purposeless. One needs clean clothes and sheets and towels. One needs to eat.  It’s the mundane routineness of doing being a househusband that does not supply what I believe is a human need for Purpose.  Of course, acting and teaching come with routines. Actors rehearse and prepare for performance, teachers make lesson plans, take attendance, have conferences with parents; but in a real sense, those are like getting ready to go to sleep. And I don’t mean that I don’t enjoy cooking because I do very much which is why I instead of Edie cook. Edie distinctly does not like to cook.  When she was single and cooked for herself, she saw the process as not dissimilar to filling her car with gas. And as for laundry, well, clean clothes and sheets and towels are necessary, from time to time.

I can’t say I enjoy the laundry part, but satisfaction is good to have. I am satisfied with the degree of cleanliness, but not so much my folding skills. I would like to be as good a folder as my dear friend Winsor. When we were both teaching and living in a boarding school, I sometimes watched him fold. It was a wonderment! After he has folded towels, T-shirts, or running shorts, for instance, one might fairly expect to see them next on the shelves in Bloomingdale’s waiting to be purchased. It seemed to me his hands moved the same way mine did when I folded my own laundry, but when he finished! Talk about feeling inadequate.

Still and all, neither meal preparation nor laundering give me in any way the feeling of worth that I obtained from acting and teaching.  What are you gonna do!