The Home-Maker

 

I love this painting: A Kitchen Interior by Harold Harvey.  It's on the cover of the latest Persephone biannually.  I was excited to receive it earlier this week all the way from Persephone Books in London. It's a good day for a book.  It's overcast and wet outside.  Raining lightly.  It sounds nice and looks pretty.

I'm also sick.  Actually I'm more than sick.  I have a miserable cold.  This is the worst cold I've had in a long, long time.  I feel like my head's going to explode, and I might loose my voice--and quite possibly a lung--with the next coughing attack.  I've reached the stage in my cold where I have those annoying coughing attacks from that irritating, dripping tickle--you know, the kind that make you start sweating and feel like you're going to pee your pants you cough so much?  That kind of cough.  Miserable, I tell you!

I sound like Marge Simpson, and I look like a smurf in Andrew's big ol' blue fleece robe.  Mama smurf. He doesn't wear it because it makes him sneeze for some reason, so I wear it instead.  I have my own robe, but I prefer his.  I even have a new, cute robe from Anthropologie that he gave me, and for no occasion, just because (it's this one).  Very sweet, he is.  Maybe he's just tired of seeing me look like a ridiculous smurf in his (even though he tells me I look cute in it, which I don't believe).  But his big blue robe is just sooo snuggly.  And the pockets are big enough to neatly hold the roll of toilet paper I carry around with me so I can blow my nose every 5 minutes (I've used up all the puffs so I've had to resort to TP). Something about schlepping round like this makes me feel like Charlie Brown.  So, you can probably see why it's a good book day.

One book I bought in London at Persephone Books was The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fischer.  I'm actually finished with The Home-Maker and onto another book, but being in a book mood reminded me I haven't mentioned how much I liked it.  I really, really liked it.  I can't say it would make a top 10, but it's very good.  I really like domestic novels and this one is a really good one.  It isn't for everyone, though.  Or, I should say, you can't give this book to just anyone.  You'd have to be careful about who you give it too.  Once you know what it's about, you'll understand.  It was written in 1924, but the themes are still so relevant today.  It challenges the traditional idea that mothers make the best home-makers--and should be happy doing so--and it explores what happens when a husband and wife change roles.  I like so many things about this book, but maybe especially how well Dorothy Canfield Fischer shows you the world through a child's eyes.  It's a good read.  You can find out more about the book here.  Time for me to make more tea and smurf up to another book while Lois finishes her nap. (Cough, cough. Blow nose. Repeat.)