LETTER FROM A NEW WIFE

Laura Lehman Amstutz

Dear Karen,

I’ve cut my finger nearly once a week since I’ve been married. Perhaps they are trying to become the calloused farm wife fingers of my ancestors. Or perhaps they are just more used to the computer keyboard than the knife.

I have discovered that college did not prepare me for this life, in which my outlet for creative energy is food and cleaning, not books and writing. While college tried to instill in me a social consciousness, it did not prepare me for the reality of living that life.

In response to my social conscience, I have frequented a farmers market in my new town. I am fully aware of the plight of organic farmers trying to make it against the evil empire of the corporate farm. However, my class taught me nothing of shelling peas, which was required yesterday as a result of my market shopping. They did manage to make it out of the shell and into the bowl, but not without mishap and not as expertly as I imagined those early pioneer women doing it. The ones I used to read about in cheesy Christian romance novels. The beautiful, pious young woman sits on the porch shelling peas when the dashingly handsome non-Christian man rides up on his horse, says something witty, and flashes an amazing smile. Oh if only he would go to church, the young woman thinks.

In my kitchen there were no horses, no dashing men, besides the ones on television. Not the soaps, but equally mind-numbing daytime shows. And the peas, as mentioned before, do not fall easily into the bowl from deft fingers, used to darning socks and killing chickens.

I have tried to convince my penny-conscious husband to shop at the only locally owned grocery store, but he scoffs at the idea of spending a dollar more for every item. So I go secretly when he’s not around, and I don’t tell him. It’s like I’m doing something wrong. But alas, my socially responsible college did not arouse his conscience and even if it had tried, he’d be one of the ones who sat sullenly in the back or slept. The ones who needed the class to graduate and took the easiest prof they could find.

I’ve discovered I like cleaning the bathroom. It’s something I know how to do thanks to my mom’s training when I was 10. Every time I pull out the cleaning supplies and go into the bathroom, I remember the bathroom of our ranch-style home. Long, narrow, wide sink, large mirror. "Start from the top and work down," Mom would say, so we’d go at the mirror. I used to have to sit on the countertop to reach the top.

I used to hate the toilet, but now it’s sort of a comfort. It is one area of the house that shows real progress when it’s cleaned. And thanks to the invention of Clorox wipes, I no longer have to think about the hideous number of germs collecting on the sponge every time I wipe the seat and bowl. Just wipe and throw away. What would my college say about that? Oh, the trials of a socially conscious germ-a-phobe.

I always swore I’d never spend as much time in front of the ironing board as my mother. Thanks to my incredible lack of skill, I will never have to worry about that. Men’s pants have utterly stunned me. Who knew they’d be so incredibly complicated to iron? My husband, Mr. Picky-Pants, as I have begun calling him in matters of ironing, has decided that for the sanity of his wife and the sanctity of his clothing, he will iron his own things.

However, some 1950s housewife part of me feels guilty about this. I spend all day at home; shouldn’t I do this menial task? If we’re talking about equality here, it’s sort of like he’s paying me to be his housekeeper and cook. At least that’s what I tell myself when I feel lousy about not contributing financially to our marriage. But I’m a terrible housekeeper, and not worth the "money" he spends on me. Yet perhaps marriage is about more than an equal sharing of roles.

When I complain about my inability to do housekeeping duties, my loving, caring husband says, "It’s good for you." This could mean two things, neither of them particularly appealing. The first is that it is good for me to learn these tasks and do them well because that is a woman’s "place," and all these years in school I have just been fooling around.

I have chosen to believe he has in mind the second, slightly less chauvinistic meaning, which is that it is good for me to have to do something I’m not good at. This is an attitude I do not particularly care for. But such is marriage, good with bad, and all that.

And so I must endure, until the autumn, when I can continue my academic pursuits, and pray that I will suddenly be too busy to care about pants and peas and toilets.

All good epistles end with admonition, so here it is, my dearest Karen. I do not advise you not to marry, for that would be a foolish thing for me to say at this point. But my dear, I advise you to remember that while you may be a goddess among men in academia, in relationship to your husband’s wrinkly pants, you are simply a woman without a clue.

Enjoy academia while you can, dear Karen, and remember, the crease is supposed to come from the pleat, not from beside it.

Love and Pokes,

Laura "The Housewife" Amstutz

—Laura (Lehman) Amstutz from Kidron, Ohio, recently graduated from Bluffton College with a B.A. in Communication and a minor in writing. She is married to Brandon Amstutz and living in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she is pursuing an M.Div. from Eastern Mennonite Seminary.