Linens and the past

When I was little, my mother had a habit of buying many table linens for our dining room, and we had a large cabinet where all of the linens were folded and stored. As a setter of the table, trying to find matching linens was a maddening task. On occasion, I would take out all of the linens and try to organize them and then put them away. Despite my mother's penchant for pretty linens, she had no interest whatsoever in organizing them. In her eyes, caring about such things was anathema to her generation's concern for women's rights, and caring about the home to any certain degree was a sheer reversal of burning bras. (For the record, she was a stay at home mom with many bras, and most meals were home-cooked, and rarely did we ever go out for dinner--ah, but irony was never a part of her vocabulary).

Even when I was a kid, I knew I was the type of girl she openly berated. She made fun of women who were overtly domestic, equating them as mindless ninnies who had no real substance to the world. As a consequence, even though I knew I was someone who enjoyed domestic life, I never admitted my affection for organizing my world and enjoying the scent of fabric softener and lemon scented dish soap as I shop for housecleaning products. No, I knew I had to keep these things secret.

Our pantry closet is also the place where the washer and dryer, as well as table linens, are kept. I have been keeping our linens on a shelf above the washer, but as you could imagine, over time the pile has grown to be an unruly mess, and attempting to get place mats out of the pile is a gamble. So yesterday I finally went out and got two fabric covered bins from Michael's.

This morning, I took all of our linens down, and organized them into two piles: tablecloths and runners and place mats and napkins. As I sorted, I felt a sense of accomplishment, and I remembered attempting to do the same thing so many years ago. Back then, though, I was just a kid, and I had to hide my enjoyment of organizing such things. I also had no ability to go out and buy baskets or bins to do such a thing.

As I organized and made sense of that small collection, I also thought about what my mother's generation got so wrong. To be successful and accomplished as a woman, it doesn't have to mean disowning all things domestic. We can be both domestic and successful, and there should be no guilt in that.