My parent’s work ethic lives on

My parents never said we had to work before we played. They never posted a list of rules by which our family lived. But it was the law nonetheless.
By the time I was 11, I had incorporated work before play so thoroughly that in a sixth grade letter assignment I wrote my cousin, “We will go play in the woods as soon as we do the dinner dishes.” The teacher totally embarrassed me by reading that sentence to the class as an example of a good work ethic.
To make sure we did the tasks we were given, our parents checked up on us. When we lived on the dairy farm and mom had to be in the barn helping my dad, she kept track of our practice time at the piano by our reflection in the mirror on the wall behind us. She knew how long we practiced – we never figured out how she knew, but we knew we could not skip a day.
As teenagers, we felt safe from her watchful eyes – she worked an hour from home and dad was busy at the neighbor’s ranch down the road. Both assumed as mature, responsible teenagers we would live by the rules. And we did … sort of. We set up the ironing board, pulled out the vacuum sweeper and switched on the television set – it was the first time we had one in the house. We had to catch up on sit-com re-runs
The moment our dad’s car turned in the driveway, the re-runs shrank into a dot on the black and white screen. I yanked a blouse over the end of the ironing board, and my sister made sure the vacuum sweeper roared before he opened his car door.
He could see we were working, even if all he said was that he had come home for a sandwich.
Another mother and I touched on that subject recently. We both heartily agree that keeping kids busy is better than having them sulk around the house doing whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want. Just one little whine of “I’m bored,” and we have the answer, “We have windows that need to be washed, a lawn to mow, a floor to clean and a stack of clothes to sort and fold.” Bored ingratitude dissipates under the duress of household chores.
I thought everyone understood my work ethic. When I was asked to sit with my husband’s wheel-chair bound grandmother for a month, I handed her a pan of string beans to snap. She slowly worked her way through the small pile and handed them back to me. I thanked her for her help. She snapped, “well you told me to do it.”
I did? I was shocked. I would never tell my elders what to do. But then … I did expect her to want to help out. She had two hands and nothing to do except read or watch TV. I had plenty of work to do and not enough time.
I thought she would want to have something to keep her hands and mind occupied and that attitude is my own grandmother’s fault – she always told us to leave the dishes. “It will give me something to do,” she said and asked my mom to remember to drop off our clothes and socks that needed mending.
The year my husband’s company closed down, he caught a whiff of my impatient attitude, “Don’t just sit there, do something!” I had lots of ideas. He told me he could keep himself busy, thank you. I backed off.
Last week he volunteered at Habitat for Humanity and detailed their daily accomplishments. I stopped by to see what he had done. He told another worker, “My wife is checking up on me.”
Not, me! I was just stopping by for a sandwich.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)