Elihu Vedder: Fisherman and Mermaid (1888-1889)

" … I prefer to do my own ironing."

I am, like all males, Helpless in many ways. All men avoid developing certain skills for a wide variety of reasons. I, for instance, cannot dust. I tell The Muse it's because my failing eyesight cannot discern dust from whatever it’s covering, but since my cataract surgeries left me with nearly 20/20 vision, that reason lacks believability. I still stick by it, dusting being, by personal affirmation, beyond my calling. Nor do I sew, although tailors are often males. My mother was a very talented seamstress, so I probably inherited the genes, and The Muse likewise sews like a pro, so I don't lack a qualified mentor. Yet, I'm sure that sewing remains far beyond my skill set. I am also nobody's auto mechanic or technical support. Anything with many moving parts requiring a precision hand lands outside my skills, abilities, and experiences, or so I insist.

I probably drew my competence lines for reasons other than my lack of fine motor skills. I play the guitar and even write songs, and both activities are perhaps at least as challenging as sewing. I am sometimes even a competent cook and an absolute wizard at cleaning pots and pans, yet I imagine many domestic chores as beyond my potential competence. I remain rather studiously Helpless, a hardly believable stance. I could, I suppose, even master calculus, though it has evaded my mastery for decades. I suspect that my Helplessnesses spring from personal decisions, perhaps persuaded by specific influencers and mentors who strongly suggested what a proper person should master and not. What a REAL leader does and doesn't, for instance, and what a real husband does and a real wife: cultural imperatives.

My mom insisted that my brother and I learn to iron our clothes. When I was in fourth grade, she announced that if I wanted my shirts wrinkle-free, it would henceforth be entirely up to me. She would teach me to iron, and I would inherit sole responsibility for my ironing. Under those conditions, I quickly mastered the chore. I even came to enjoy it, discovering a placidly meditative trance within it. I spent a perfectly enjoyable yesterday afternoon ironing shirts while watching the Dodgers whip the Diamondbacks. I could even iron my own pants, and not even pleats chased me off. I came to feel proud of this skill and ungenerous when I encountered males without this ability. My mother taught me well, though, in my birth family, most domestic chores were more closely divided between the genders. Generally, inside chores were for the girls and outside for the boys, with ironing almost the sole exception. Saturday mornings would find my brother and I outside with our Dad, mowing, raking, and weeding while the girls were inside with our Mom, vacuuming, dusting, and scrubbing. I was never subjected to any training in dusting, so I failed to imprint the skill before I became untrainable, or so I still insist.

One can tell much about any individual by learning where they're Helpless. Those like me who don't seem all that mechanically inclined aren't bad examples of males, just different. Those pitiful men who cannot cook for themselves or their families seem particularly unlucky, for it seems they should have been able to learn to cook if they could clean a carburetor. I'm Helpless with small gasoline engines. I can usually yank their cord all day without inciting actual ignition. I do not know why, and, more importantly, I do not care to understand why. I could apply myself and learn to dust with a similar aplomb with which I iron, though I probably won't. I might unconsciously feed myself some positive reinforcement whenever I claim to be a Helpless duster. I advise The Muse to remove her glasses, and the offending dust simply will disappear. I think my advice endearing. She finds it frustrating.

I'm sometimes less help than a rag doll might be. I've successfully delimited my range of responsibilities so that I've survived to thrive at my age. If I had embraced every expectation and mastered every challenge in turn, I would have probably burned myself out at forty. I limit my learning to retain some growing room for learning the few skills I might deem worthy of acquiring. For much of modern society, I'm just as Helpless as I intend to be, and on a good day, a good deal more. It's healthy to maintain certain boundaries even if this requires some self-delusion to achieve. I'd rather my inbox be half-full than overflowing, my responsibilities narrower rather than broad, and my talents focused on what best encourages my self-esteem. When I need something sewn, I ask The Muse. She prefers that I not touch her sewing machines, just like I prefer to do my own ironing.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz