In the Tide-Mud

Last night, to enter back into the research stream, I read a chapter of Stowe's biography by Joan Hedrick. It was a chapter about Stowe raising kids at home while her husband, Calvin, was away raising support for Lane Seminary, where he, along with Stowe's father, was employed. Money was tight. The house was full of boarders whose rent was to buffer the family budget. Around May of 1844, Stowe told Calvin in a letter:

Since you have been gone, I have had a great pressure of care upon me - The arranging of the whole house with reference to the new system - the cleaning &c- the children's clothes, & the baby often have seemed to press on my mind all at once. Sometimes it sems as if anxious thoughts had become a disease with me from which I could not be free.

Part of Harriet's problem seems to have been that she overcommitted. Her husband chided her in another letter:

Will not experience and no suffering teach you, that there are certain boundaries which you have no right to pass over?

In the middle of this "tide-mud of the real," as Harriet called it, this daily-ness of raising kids, making meals, making sure everyone is clothed, trying to save money, I am of necessity learning to let go of some things that entangle me. I say learning, because I can't honestly say I've broken free of them. But under this "tremendous pressure," it is hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that I can't do everything and still do the things I must.

And my life is not all drudgery. I am removed from HBS's way of life. I don't actually have to make clothes or hang them all to dry. I don't have a house full of boarders, thank heaven. Just my little tribe that keeps me going from sunup until I turn out the light at the end of the day and hope they'll keep sleeping.

I was actually a bit depressed after reading this chapter. Maybe it was a little too real for me. I am glad to know that Stowe had struggles like mine, and yet, wish that someone could have transcended them better.