1 post tagged “labor day”
In spirit of Labor Day, what are some things you love about your job?
What are some things I love about my job?
Dusting was instilled in me at a very young age. Actually, dusting goes back to good ole King Henry V111. Henry wrote it into law that all royal "women are to dust starting from toddlers to the ripe age of fifteen years old". Next to reading the Bible, King Henry placed royal accounting at the top of his list and that was even before singing and preparing for plays. The poor may dream away thinking about life was like in a palace. Little did they know that all maids and footmen were kin to the Kings and Queens. Thus, the royal women and some of the men could be seen on their knees, fannies a wagging, from the nightly duties of washing floors, dusting pictures and bringing in the groceries from the fields. As a King or Queen walked through the premises mops would disappear into China cabinets, behind couches, and into clocks. Elsie Wigle had a favourite expression, "out of sight out of mind".It was cheaper for the Kings and Queens to have other royals attend their every wish whether it be reading from the Bible at three in the morning or fetching stool samples.
Thus, in 1970, as I brisked through a castle I stopped, "Anne what are you doing?"
"Dusting!?!"
"Why is she dusting?" I inquired of the Butler.
I didn't wait for him to look up the answer. "Anne how old are you?"\
"Sixteen?"
"And what does the royal book say about dusting?"
The Butler hedged. "Does it not say that all royal women are to dust up to the age of fifteen? Anne stop your dusting. Go to your room and read a book." I should have said, "read the Bible." Does she own one? All royals are to write out the Bible by hand a Jehovah rule assigned about four thousand years ago.
Henry the V111 was of the opinion that all men and women must be employable or at least marriageable. Who would want a woman that could not take charge of a household and keep a clean house? And, he did not want them. Thus, Elizabeth the first, dusted her life away into teenage years, looking not forward to neither marriage nor companionship but for the freedom not to dust and to do as one pleased. She was so before her time. She never expected to marry not with all the freckles on her face. Oh sorry. It was Mary, Queen of Scots that had the freckles? It did not matter....it only took white cream to cover freckles. One would have thought that Mary herself would have thought about following the example of her elder. Mary had freaks. Elizabeth did not. Other than that the took looked like peas in a pod. Freckles or not they DUSTED, fannies wagging as they polished the floors with their skirts if that was all they had in their hand as the King slowly marched around with both fists clasped behind his back fingers checking occasionally a stair case or a ledge.
Shirley Jane Temple won a beauty contest for "nuts". It did not matter to her if she was referred to as a nut. She needed money desperately to look for her missing uncle. This is what little lost girls do when they are in a hostile country like the United States of America. A stranger encouraged her to audition at a studio where men sat around pressing their noses against glass windows, "is she here yet?" Adults find small things amusing don they not? Shirley showed up carrying her award with her. The studio did not need her. So, she tried a different tactic. She knocked on a studio door to inquire if they needed someone to "dust" or "wash a floor." If one could not find a man to marry one must be prepared to make one's way through life as at least an employable person or so mused Henry. And, he was right. Shirley did not need a bucket. She had her award in the form of a bowl. Nothing seemed to change in manhood since Henry V111 to the Twentieth Century. Small things amuse men. They haven't changed nor evolved in the least.
I have five buildings to take care of in a given week. I am the superintendent or assistant on call. One must make a living at least till pension time where I might receive at least five to nine hundred dollars a month. In the meantime, dusting keeps me on my toes. It guarantees lodging at least for another thirty days. Could life be better than this?
Elsie Wigle made a living dusting in the Windsor Police Station and it keep her off of the dole. The rest of the time she remained penniless as she spent her money not on her daughters and sons but on the poor. It is an English thing I think. Perhaps a phase that is phasing out but for awhile Christians wanted to prove to Jesus that they could be like him even if it was just giving a glass of water to a priest or a nun or a man of God. I think Jesus was of the opinion that any assistance on the part of a person might be a hard requirement and he brought the giving down to a mere glass of water.
"He that receives you receives me also, and he that receives me receives him also that sent me forth. He that receives a prophet because he is a prophet will get a prophet's reward, and he that receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will get a righteous man's reard and whoever gives on of these little ones only a cup of cold water to drink because he is a disciple, I tell you truly, he will by no means lose his reward." Matthew 10:42
Elsie Dolittle did a lifetime of dusting and giving drinks to the poor. When she passed away, an elder's wife commented to me after I had made mention of seeing her in the resurrection, "oh your mother won't be resurrected."
Why would anyone assume that my mother would not be resurrected? She had placed her crown before Christ Jesus and recognized, when she abdicated, that he was the ONLY only one worthy of a crown. She supported missionaries and sent monies for the blind, homeless and Bibles to the prisons. She kept herself morally clean and remained a saint till she died. She never sat at a table with a man unless he was accompanied with a woman. She never dated let alone take more than a moment of her time to talk to a man. She was above reproach. She supported at least one Jehovah's witness. Why wouldn't she be resurrected?
She dusted.
I was called to the US by a FBI director about a case I might be interested in. Upon return from the funeral my mother Elsie Dolittle is packing up breakfast dishes in our Essex home. "You know if you were to get the kids to help you....you could keep this house cleaner."
What had I missed? I always did the spring cleaning thing before Elsie arrived, the closets, under the couch, the ledges...I mean everything.
"And, another thing, I think that you should encourage your children to become doctors or nurses. If you don't want to go to war at least they should do something to help out."
"Mom? What did you do to the trees?"
"Oh, I cut off the branches and dug up the dirt around them." I could see. I had branches trees and lime painted on the trunks and the ground tilled. That was what Elsie Dolittle did on holidays like Labour Day.
And me, I buried someone.
