I tried some things on for size. Part-time domestic goddess. Nah. Domestic renaissance. Ummm…no. Back to basics just in the afternoons. Sure, whatever. Finally I settled on being the person with the no name hobby that was mostly a hodgepodge of old domestic arts mixed in with some good environmental responsibility.
Maybe the reason why I couldn’t come up with a name is because what I was trying to get into was not a hobby but more of a lifestyle change. All I wanted to do was come home to a place that was filled with meaning as opposed to knickknacks and expensive furniture. I wanted to live a full and rewarding family life without all the trappings of modern technology. I wanted us to raise food with our hands, cook it in our home, and eat it together. I just wanted all of us to come home.
Now, I do believe in free choice. I didn’t think that it was fair for me to drag my husband and kids into this adventure kicking and screaming if it was not something that they wanted to do. I decided that I would change the way I did things, and let them join in if they felt like it. No pressure (what a concept, after being raised by the mother of all pressuring mothers). Show them a good thing and let them come and get it if they are interested. There had to be something in this life change of mine that interested them. And, even if there wasn’t, they would eat better and I didn’t think I would get complaints about that.
I first envisioned this new life as a sort of social experiment. You can’t blame me, I have been doing experiments for a living most of my life. I would chronicle the whole thing in a blog. People would be able to follow it. It would be a grand adventure on a large scale. It would…wait a minute…it would be just like those books I had been into lately. Barbara Kingsolver’s year of eating locally. A.J. Jacobs year of living biblically. Was I nothing more than a copycat? Was I waiting for a date to start this new life so I could do it for a whole exact year? Was I going to create that kind of pressure for myself? I was so disappointed in my own competitive nature. That was so NOT what this whole thing was about. It was about being happy and fulfilled and relaxed. I had never written anything before, save for research papers. Was I asking for rejection letters and re-writes? Was I crazy?
Back to the drawing board I went.
It finally hit me that I had to write about it because I was afraid that I would forget the things I did and what worked or didn’t work. This indicated to me that there was a specific need for a journal. I also had to write about it to make it real. It felt a little more real just now as I finished typing that sentence. A private journal would not create any pressure. I would just write when I felt like it. I could also organize it (or not organize it) any way I wanted, which was a big plus.
As far as making it a year, or putting any other time constraints on it, I scrapped that idea. As a very loose starting date, I chose my birthday, on September 25, 2007. Some things were already started around that date, some were just in the form of an idea or a stack of library books. The wheels were in motion, and I had secured some participation from family members. My husband was on board with the plan to plant a medium size organic garden in the backyard in the spring. We signed up together for a rainwater collection workshop in October. The kids were warned that we may be going to the Farmer’s Market more often. Lots of fruits and vegetables started to pepper the table.
Even my mother was alerted of the change. She was in her own private hell at the time, coping with the effects of chemotherapy, but she got on board. She liked the fresh veggies and all the cooking I was doing. She even started knitting a scarf with some natural sheep yarn that we got from a local fiber farm. Our time to come home, to come to our home-turned-farm had started. No ending date had been set, and maybe one would never become necessary.
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