Thoughts on housework and depression

[Looking through my old posts, I found one that I started back in April of 2009, on housework (of all things!). It was very nearly finished. By that I mean that it ends in mid-sentence, and I no longer remember (now, almost a year later) quite how I was going to finish the thought. But on the other hand, I think that even in its fragmentary state it describes most of a whole thought. Anyway, I think it also has some tangential bearing on Sunday's post; and so, out of a kind of antiquarian interest, I offer it here with only the most minimal tidying up.]


A few days ago I posted about a conversation Wife and I had had which touched on topics of depression and housework. I really saw it as a post about Wife's depression, with echoes back to the previous post about Kathleen Norris (the reference to acedia) and with foreshadowing to the next post about D's divorce (the reference to our love being as reliable as gravity).

The comments, though, focussed a lot more attention on the question of housework than I had originally imagined it would get. I hasten to add that the readers who commented -- Kyra and O -- are two of the best readers a blogger could ever want; and their remarks were the kind of comments that make it worth blogging in the first place: personal, thoughtful, and challenging. And yet I couldn't (and can't) escape the feeling that our attention is caught by somewhat different things. The upshot is that instead of hiding a reply in the comments, I want to talk for a couple of minutes about housework.

Kyra talks about the repetitive nature of housework. O adds to this that housework is not a way to live a complete life. And at that level, I would completely agree with both of them. One hundred percent.

If we part company at all -- and I'm actually not sure whether we do -- it would be over the question whether being tied to the repetitive round of housework makes one intrinsically unfree. Certainly some people have said unequivocally that it does: that housework is servitude. I cannot quite tell whether Kyra and O agree, but there are moments where it sounds like they might.

But I don't think it has to mean that at all. I think there is no necessary connection: just because one's hands are doing something repetitive does not mean that one's mind or soul is in chains. If Zen monks can achieve enlightenment by sitting still and staring at a wall, surely I can think about politics or religion or blogging or sex while doing the dishes. This is why I quoted Lovelace in my earlier post:

Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage;
If I have freedom in my Love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such Liberty.

I sometimes think I am constitutionally incapable of making a theoretical argument without giving an example, and I'm about to give one now. I have alluded in the past to a period several years ago when I was unemployed for nineteen months. This was after Wife had gone out on Disability because of her various illnesses (mostly the lupus), so we didn't have a second income when I lost mine. It was not a good time, and I spent nearly full time each day job-hunting.

At the same time, since my schedule was now flexible -- and since my initial layoff coincided with a very bad spell in Wife's health -- I took over most or all of the housework. Admittedly some of it just never got done. But the daily and weekly basics -- driving the boys to and from school, shopping for food, cooking meals, washing the dishes and the laundry -- all these found their way onto my list of responsibilities. And I didn't mind doing them. In some ways, I kind of enjoyed them. They were a break, after all, from writing cover letters and cold-calling employers (like that ever worked!) and checking the newspaper ads and all the hundred other tasks involved in looking for work. What is more, I never had to stop thinking about whatever else I was doing just because I needed to tackle the dishes or the laundry. (In fact, while trying to figure out what to say in this post, I got up and did the dishes from tonight's dinner.) I have often said that I wouldn't mind doing the housework today if Wife were well enough to work and I were the one on Disability. (I would certainly get more blogging done!) The only reason I ask her to do it is that I'm the one with the paying job these days and therefore don't have the time to do it all myself. Also, exactly like Kyra, I feel that it is not unfair to ask everybody in the household to pitch in according to his or her ability.

My only point to Wife, therefore, is that it is her own thinking which makes the difference ................................................

[The manuscript ends abruptly here.]