windows, weeds & wisdom

When I was a child, chores made sense to me only in that things needed to be done so I had to do them just as much as anyone else.  The extrinsic reward was an allowance.  The intrinsic reward was my inherent love for order and beauty...and things returning to their rightful place.  The guarantee of a warm smile and equally warm fuzzies from my mom was the icing on the cake.  Since we bought our farmhouse my love for this ‘busywork’ (as my daughters call it) has grown as well as the sheer volume of it.  I fondly renamed weeding “dirt therapy’.  As I dug my hands in the dirt this evening to pull out the relentless weeds, I contemplated the generations of moms before me who spent countless hours faithfully doing the same task.  It dawned on me that they ‘got’ the metaphorical value of these activities.  In this moment I understood that weeding and other routine chores is a cleansing ritual or spiritual practice of sorts for the common householder.  Cleaning windows cleanses our perspective and holds the potential for a whole new outlook on life.  Scrubbing floors and baseboards purifies and solidifies our foundation.  Digging in the dirt reminds us to dig deeply within ourselves to extricate the growth of things that do not serve our essential purpose. Little did I know back then how wise my mama was and what she was really up to when she religiously returned to her windows and weeds and trained us to do the same.  It feels like a rite of passage and an emergence of wisdom to have unearthed the deeper significance of these common earthly practices.  Thank you.