so yesterday, a monday . . . I was catching up on a few things . . .including a book recommendation - The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues
(Susan Griffon, Broadway Books, 2001). Amazon's image of the book cover looked familiar, sending me to my bookshelf to see if I already owned it . . .there, instead, I discovered Natalie Zemon Davis' Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives
(Harvard University Press, 1995). flipping through, I read a margin note I'd made many years ago now. . . "idea of paying another to do home chores, a practice of the aristocracy, being used by middle-class women to free up time so they may follow their own inner voice"echoed in this jot was an historical footnote first brought to my attention in a college seminar; to this day it resonates with me profoundly - and i paraphrase - all progress as far as women's rights and feminism aside, there have been women throughout history who have not allowed cultural expectations and daily duties to limit them, who have found time and space -- even if it meant sneaking deep in the night after housework was complete & as family slept -- to pen a poem, birth a novel, allow a watercolor . . . in short to create and not lay silent.
this particular monday, though so many years later, the margin note came to life . . . and here, I must introduce you to millie . . .
millie is a recent addition to our home & an unexpectedly rich one. once a week, she spends from 9.30 in the morning until 7.00 at night placing freshly bleached towels over door saddles so that feet and paws may pause upon entering, scrubbing windows until they glimmer, watering thirsty plants and dusting fan blades and window blinds - all the while lavishing kisses and conversation on our three ever-attentive dogs. by dusk, each wednesday, in our home a lighthearted calm pervades.
I have had help in the house for as long as I can remember . . . millie is different. perhaps it is her compassion; perhaps her grasp of a bigger picture - her earnings go in part to pay another woman, one who cares for millie's house and dog back home. millie understands what she provides; her presence frees me.
released to my creative space, I am able to explore the metes and bounds of what I have to say and how I want to say it. one may argue that today most professionals delegate domestic maintenance while they go to the office . . .and this is true. what I speak of is a little different and perhaps not different at all . . . I am not going to an office. much of the time, I do not even get paid for what I do. millie is a part of our world due to my conscious decision to make space in order that i may speak . . .
and I have found, now that I am in that space, a boundless world to explore, one that grows richer each day I come to the page . . . I understand how fortunate I am. I also know being here is the product of many difficult, sometimes scary, other times seemingly ridiculous choices or impossible, even painful steps . . . i didn't end up here by luck. it was an act of courage; it is why Davis felt so compelled to illuminate the lives of these 17th-century women - individuals who "illustrate the significance of writing and language for self-discovery, moral exploration and . . .discovery of others" (pp.64-5) . . . proof that each time we tuck into a sketch before bed or steal early morning moments to transcribe a poem, we are part of a lineage dating back far earlier than the 1600's - of those who have moved according to their own rhythms, allowing convention to fall to the shadows in order that they may speak.
until next time . . . happy musings xo
