Hagintha Woods

Inspiration for this thinkpiece.
This is the last part, with part 1 and part 2 posted previously.

Coming back from my girls’ trip with 3 other women, I came with a new viewpoint on the joy that could be found with the doing of chores, and a want to bring such joy to my family at home.

I would like to profess that I was by far still very inexperienced in the art of chores. The trip was a week, and I am not the fastest of learners.

All the same, I went back home with a spring in my step, enchanted by the secret I now held, ready to share the promise of housework in my family.

But once again, I had underestimated the strength of community and routine.

Upon my return, I felt as if I stepped into a physical wall of resistance. Immediately, I was greeted with my family in the rooms where they each spent their time, engrossed in their own activities the way I am often sunk in mine.

As they did in social situations, my words and body failed me, and I stood there in silence.

They looked up, and there were smiles, hugs of welcome. “Welcome home!” They greeted warmly, pulling me in for a hug. “How was your trip?”

I saw a whole new way of living. “Incredible.” There is an added dimension through which we can live our days. “The scenery was beautiful and the water was so clear.” I was washing dishes and sweeping floors, and I was also living because when you do it together, it’s like no time at all. “I got to ride horses and they were very kind.” Let me show you. “I wish you were there to see it.”

My wheels caught in the muddy wheel of routine, tongue stilled by reality, I didn’t quite know how to bring it forth. In that light, surrounded by those walls, it seemed so silly, like an idealistic flight of fancy.

But I lived it. I experienced it. I sat down, and I pondered.

Unable to describe what the magic was without it losing some part of itself with my inexperience, I resolved to try in my own ways. I would simply show them.

I started small. I wiped the table after eating, and took their trash with me to throw away when I went out. I refilled the water. I made tea.

My dad noticed me wiping the table and nodded approvingly. “Good.” He harrumphed. I waited a week -it took me a few days, after all. I noticed he did not show any sign of starting to do the same.

My brother did not notice that I cleared his lunch containers and threw the trash. My mother watched the nearest drama on the television.

These were not new behaviours.

In fact, if I looked at myself, I will find those behaviours within me, things I did not see because it was difficult to look at myself without a mirror. And yet, it curdled the emotions that were so light and fluttery within me, turned them hard and bitter, a seed I sucked on, traced the grooves of with my tongue.

My friends were patient with me. But I wanted to learn. I did learn.

I carried this experience within me like a personal failing. If I knew how good this was, why didn’t they when I did it? Was I doing it wrong? Was I not good enough to acknowledge, to try for?

When my parents and I went to visit my sister some time later, I went somewhere else first. When I joined up with them later, I was greeted with differences.

My dad was washing the dishes as my mother loaded the dishwasher, and they both tackled the laundry.

Perhaps it was the environment, the change of space that made someone more open to shifting, and the lack of help at home. I was envious of my sister’s ability, unsure about how to emulate it.

Perhaps, however, they also felt the touch of society, surrounded by my sister, her husband and her children, who they needed to be a good role model for. Here, everyone did the chores, so not doing them was what felt like going against the grain.

When they returned, they sank back into their usual routines, seemingly not realising that they’d shifted at all.

~~

With different communities, people change.

We are all different people, and by basis of interacting with others, we are watching each other for cues, melding ourselves at different intensities of the cohesiveness of the world around us. This is not a bad thing. Like when I went on my girls’ trip, it can help a person learn new things, shift mindsets, and build new habits. It can help a person break out of their routine.

But to use it effectively, I do think it hinges on the two things I mentioned before. First, realising that one’s community is different, and that one’s own is one of many. One has to develop a conscious knowledge of the fact that one changes based on company.

As my parents have shown, it would happen either way, but if one is unaware, they may change without realising how they are shifting, or pull away completely. However, if one instead acknowledges that society changes them, they have the unique opportunity to enter different communities and be aware of how one is changing.

It sensitizes a person, allows a person to parse out the differences in each community and person it’s made of that led to the building of such a world. It allows one to follow that thread to the ideas that went behind the habits, rituals, and then what that community feels to be fact of matter.

Secondly, one then has to have an idea of one’s sense of self. That way, experiencing different ways of life allows a person to not merely be an assimilator, but also an evaluator. A person can compare the differences against what they are used to without presuming that either way has to be either good or bad. One gets to feel the rhythm of what others may feel to be obvious, then decide if they’d like to change their life or keep to what they know.

And through that, a person gains the ability to build the life they want intentionally, setting the frame for the picture they’d like to create.

And so, I accept that at least currently, my home dynamic would remain unchanged. However, I now know that my parents at least are capable of the work, even if they did not see the opportunity behind it, so that leaves me space to push for it within the fluctuations and circumstances of life.

Concurrently, with my present, I build my future.

Having tasted what communal chores and responsibility can feel like, I know that this was something I want. I want a home that is well-cared for, that has love varnished into the floors, respect woven into the rafters.

And so, I share my thoughts with those I love who I mean to live with, the experiences I was lucky enough to have.

Going forth, I continue to make friends with the community I want, of others who I admire and whose thoughts and habits I wish to lattice with my own. Knowing now that a healthy relationship with the fact that a life has to be maintained is important to me, I walk away from people who show that they did not feel the same way.

I search for people who I want to support, from whom I would like to receive support from, with whom I can envision building with together. And when I meet someone like that, I shore up my courage and ask if they’d like to have a cup of tea-and maybe a friendship. I get to know them, then ask if they’d like to believe in an ‘us’.

No man is an island. But each person can make their own friendships, craft and strengthen their own communities. Some luck out and grow up in the communities that fit them, but even then, experiencing differences and gaining awareness helps a person tend to the nature of their bonds, decide how they’d like it to bloom and how it can better take shape.

We feel small compared to the world, but what is the world if not thousands of communities? What are communities but different people banding together?

Faced with this, I build. Every now and then I do something nice at home, extend the offer to work toward a goal I can see that I hope my family would share, but I don’t expect change either. They are also a product of their own communities, and it brought them all this way. If they do not wish to engage in such a way, we do not have to. But if they ever want to join me there, they’d be welcome to, as long as they join me in learning how to adequately clean an oven.

I work on strengthening my own routines, so that even if I cannot hold what I want against society, at the least I can make sure I can hold it against solitude. I can only hope that in the future and with time, the life I am building is one in which I’d like to live.