I, Jason, couldn't help myself. Though the weather has just now finally gotten good and cold (twenty degrees or so at night for a few nights), there are subtle indications that spring is in the works. For one thing, I have a few more minutes of daylight now, morning and evening, to squeak in a few extra tasks around the place. Also, there were a few hens that responded almost immediately to the lengthening daylight after the solstice and kicked into their regular-season egg laying pattern.
What was I to do but start some seeds? Not outdoors, but inside under a two-tube fluorescent fixture in the old kitchen. It's not a perfect setup...the seedlings look a tad leggy. Perhaps some genuine grow light bulbs would improve things, but for now this will do. In any case, it is obvious spring fever is striking me a bit early this year; I am taking great satisfaction in gazing at and thinning my seedlings. I've started onion, lettuce, kale, parsley, and a minor experiment in wheat--the details of which would be too droll for most (suffice it to say that my wheat seed didn't come in time for fall planting and I'm mostly using it for spot cover cropping, so I thought I'd see if I could catch up). The whole seed starting enterprise was precipitated by my desire to start my onions just as early as I could, as I've usually felt my onions from seed have had a hard time reaching their full mature potential (I understand that to get nice thick starts I might wish to start them in September in a cold frame...didn't get to it!).
There is nothing quite like thinning lettuce seedlings to make one feel huge and clumsy. When I spy a weaker seedling in a clump of five (I like to have a crowd to choose from...always breeding!) I suddenly feel I have all the dexterity of a gloved gorilla, or like I'm trying to prune peach trees with a backhoe.Sometimes I have the same feeling when I'm trying to probe Alida's mouth to extract some dust fuzzy or fleck of firewood bark she's managed to locate and acquire (I try not to interfere unless I'm truly concerned she might have something worrisome in the hatch). In fact, in general I find I can feel clumsy handling the baby in tender moments. I think back on my college days...all that time spent in labs teasing insect wings into good positions for diagnostic display, all those microscope slides, the gram-sensitive mass balances...has something happened to my physical finesse? Once in a while when my earlobe itches I reach up and give it a little rub between my thumb and forefinger, and every time I am a bit jolted by the roughness of my own touch. I am thrown back instantly to my childhood...my hands feel just like my Dad's hands did.
And for the same reasons. My dad is one of the most gentle people I know; he has a light touch with people, musical instruments, tools, animals, and wood. I like to think I've picked up some of that same character, though I still work towards it. But I remember times when he'd be removing a splinter from my tender palm, or guiding me through a door, or helping me with my shoes and I would take notice of the force of his grip, the roughness of his finger skin, in ways I'd never have noticed my Mom's. It used to bug me...why couldn't he be more gentle when he was being gentle?
Now I know why. There are times when I have an opportunity to, say, build a shed or move some soil, cut a tree or split some firewood, and then I need to take a break to, say, feed the baby or change her diaper. Despite the fact that I may need to hurriedly wash up to my elbows or jerk off my contaminated clothes before receiving the vulnerable being into my arms, there is quite a mental (not to mention motor skills) leap to make between driving a galvanized 16-penny nail and q-tipping an eyelash from a child's conjunctiva (part of the eye).
I really wouldn't have it any other way. That's the kind of challenge that appeals to me. But there are times it is a bit disorienting, especially when I'm attempting to do any "rough" or "dirty" work while carrying Alida in the front pack. Managing intense physical forces while protecting fragile, precious infant body tissues requires careful attention, which can have an exhausting effect far greater than the physical demands themselves.
And so I can see the wisdom of our culture's historical division of labor: rough and forceful work for some (the ones who tend to have more upper body strength generally got this job description) and the tasks requiring tender attention to others (the ones who lactated had a natural advantage here). It's easier to not have to make such drastic gear switches all the time. But the dichotomy between "men's" and "women's" work was never complete, and much harm has come by way of making the practically based generalities into rigid expectations.
I think the main thing lost by accepting a definition of one's self as either rough and forceful or soft and tender is a truncated experience of human living. That is to say, I would be sad to think I'd never expect myself to hoist a heavy load or dig a post hole. I love that work, and have never felt complete if I go very long without some of it. But I would also feel incomplete would I never stroke my girls' hair, transplant a wire-thin wisp of onion, examine a day-old chick, or, as I have done the past two nights, gently kiss my baby daughter on the head until she drifts off to sleep.
