Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [90]
Purple though this alien visitor was, he calmed down quickly, and after his cord was cut, after he was washed, wrapped, and weighed, while the midwives busied themselves getting Mary and the room cleaned up (cheerfully scrubbing blood from the sheets), I was needed as a temporary cradle. So I took his tiny form in my arms—I’d say he weighed on the light side of a pumpkin—and began to walk him around the place. As he panned the rustic quarters, did I catch the whiff of critical bemusement? I shuddered as the words came to me: “Just my luck: no electricity.” No doubt my imagination. Still, the encounter more than made up for all the agony. I had gone from wild fear to wild, inexpressible joy.
I thought I was going to lose one, and I gained two.
Over the next several days, Mary and I recuperated and endeavored to smooth Hans’s transition to the wilderness. As we adjusted to the new routine, what with nursing and diaper-changing and midnight wake-up calls, our nearest Minimite neighbors on both sides, Millers and Joneses, cleaned up the house, mowed the yard, chopped the wood, transplanted spring greens to the garden, baked bread, washed diapers and clothes, fixed the gate they noticed the horse trying to escape through, and in general thought of what we needed before we did. Mary and I appreciated the extra time to spend with Hans. So, evidently, did Hans. But he seemed most alive, alert, and thoughtful, I have to say, when the whole crew came in to pay their respects. It was as if he were trying to relay a message he just couldn’t quite think of. Well, I’ll say it for him: “Thank you!”
For all its uncertainty, we were grateful to have had the labor at home. My own sister, a nurse, had a baby shortly later and told a tale of horror in the hospital. Compared with technological overkill, what Mary and I underwent seemed tame. Our only moment of danger, in reality, had taken place when I was on the road in a speeding machine. In retrospect, home birth raised the same underlying question of many of our other bodily endeavors here. Was it labor or luxury?
Just don’t believe everything you read.
Nineteen
Husbandry
The word house-husband is redundant. Of course! This startling thought came to me as I reached for the hand pump. The “hus-” from “husband” is simply the Old English form of the word “house,” while “band” means “bound.” The man who stays at home to work is returning to a long-forgotten calling preserved in the language like a fossil. There is no linguistic need to add the extra “house.”
Let’s see, my thought continued as I carried the two five-gallon buckets of water from the pump towards the hand-powered washing machine. If I stop and set these buckets down here, I can stir the kale and cheese sauce before it sticks to the pan. This reminded me: Oh, I still have kale to hoe in the garden. I don’t even want to think about the peas. When I come back, I’ll take that hoe and go out and catch up. And then I’ll have to walk back to the Millers’ to borrow the disk for the pumpkin ground. Musn’t forget that.
At this point, Mary interrupted my thought.
“Oh, Er-r-ric,” came her sweet voice from the bedroom, “can you tighten the band on the sewing machine? It’s come loose.”
“Now?”
“Well, I’m trying to get this comforter finished to send off to Karen.”
I thought, Well, if I do that now, the water for the washing machine will cool off, so the diapers I’m about to do won’t get very clean. Egad, what’s that?
The commotion I heard turned out to be Mr. Miller pulling in the driveway. His hoary beard quivered as he drawled, “Do ya wanna dig postholes today?” The deal Mr. Miller and I had worked out bartering my services for rent was working out very nicely. But