Kia ora Koutou,
My first experiences of work were not too bad. Checking the letter box, dusting the bedrooms, washing and wiping dishes, setting the table, sweeping the kitchen, school work, weeding, were only irritating because they interfered with my preferred option of lying on my bed reading. However, when it came to being old enough to wash the porridge pot that all changed. The slimy thick stuff that stuck to the sides and the bottom of the pot and which, if you were lucky, was caught in a sieve and if you were unlucky, had to be picked out of the sink bit by bit with your fingers, then carried outside to the latest trench Rose had dug for vegetable peelings and other food bits. As I raked some soil over the top, heaving all the way, Rose called out irritably, ‘If a few bits of cold porridge are the worst thing you ever have to face in a job, my girl, you’ll be very lucky.’
Rose’s instructions were cast in stone. As far as cleaning the porridge pot was concerned you could not swap it, exchange it or pretend to be sick and thus get out of it. Indeed, unless you were actually being carried on a stretcher to the ambulance, ‘Its your job to clean the porridge pot today,’ was the unalterable order of the day. It was no good lying and saying, ‘Its not my turn, I did it yesterday,’ because Rose always knew who’d done it yesterday even when she had not been in the kitchen or even in the house at the time. How did she do this? Did she really, as other kids said about their mothers, have eyes in the back of her head?
I approached all work that way from then on – a drag but having to be done because I had to eat, stay clean and, when I got older, buy a ticket to go to the Forrester’s Hall on a Saturday night and dance the night away to the music of Harry Brown’s Orchestra. To do this I had to have a good dress and dancing shoes (of course I did) which meant I had to buy a pattern, the fabric for the dress, and the shoes. Obviously work was the only answer.
By the time I started the job of writing I knew I wanted to do it and I knew why, I knew I could and I knew it would be hard. Indeed I did not know any work that wasn’t. That it would become enjoyable even when it was hard was a surprise. This realisation sneaked up on me one morning as I sat down at the computer and understood that working had become an indispensable part of my day. Even though some (most) days the time spent would be entirely fruitless, the whole or part of it deleted the next day, it still mattered to me that I still did it.
In some ways I’ve come a long way since that porridge pot but in other ways, I’m still there, scraping, scrubbing, rinsing under the hot water of a critical eye, and after a final polish and one last hard scrutiny, there it is, today’s work, done. Will it pass the eagle eye of tomorrow or will it be chucked into the trench of discards along with all the other sieved or sticky pieces? Will I have to scrub the whole pot again? I’ll find out tomorrow…
Renée
