Truly Liberated--but Washing, Ironing Is Irresistible

“Why haven’t you written anything about how happy we are with our new work rooms?” my wife asked the other day.

I reminded her that I had promised not to complain about our remodeling project once we started it. I had used every argument at my command to avoid it in the first place.

I argued that it would be too expensive; that we didn’t need it; that it would disrupt our lives; that it would not add its cost to the value of the house.

Every one of those arguments was sound, and now, seven months after we started, they are still sound. I pointed out that we had raised two sons in our house with two bedrooms and one bath, and now, with our sons long gone and both of us near retirement, she wanted four bedrooms and three baths.

The idea seemed so ill-advised to me that I really thought she would see the light. She was adamant. She wanted to press ahead. In the end I caved in. I have reasons for wanting her to have what she wants.

We are now in our eighth month of construction. It is no small project. We are adding two workrooms (or bedrooms), a service porch and breakfast room, and a bath, and we are enlarging my old converted-garage den into a dining room that wouldn’t be out of place in the Hearst Castle.

I am not complaining about the amount of time it is taking. Our contractor, Keith Rogers, is on the ball and solicitous of our discomfort. Remodeling is inevitably a slow business. One encounters unforeseen problems. Workmen are not always available when the job is ready for them. Then we had the holidays.

What troubles me now is the change the new space is working in our lives. The two workrooms are a new wing, over the garage. They were finished first, and we have moved into them, so to speak.

I admit that my new room is great. It is large and bright, with one big picture window above the street (you can see a part of the County Hospital as well as our neighbor’s trash cans) and another looking out on our swimming pool and the Self Realization Fellowship on top of the hill.

I have become quite accustomed to it. My computer is installed and many of my books are in the built-in shelves. I find it very pleasant to read by the picture window. I consider the change benign, and that my life will be the better for it.

The change in my wife’s life is something else. In obtaining her long-awaited service porch, she has also acquired a washing machine and dryer; also a super-quiet dishwasher.

For years we have been taking our dirty clothes out to the laundry. It did a perfectly good job. I couldn’t see why she wanted to revert to washing our clothes herself. She took two weeks off from work and spent most of it washing clothes and household articles. She has washed every dirty piece in the house, and some that weren’t dirty. She has washed my blanket, my robe and my Windbreaker, not to mention my socks, underwear and shirts.

She has washed a robe of hers that was blackened with newsprint. “See how clean it is?” she asked, holding it up proudly. She reminds me of those housewives in the ads in the women’s magazines, bragging about their household machines.

She has moved her paperwork to her new room, along with her ironing board and her TV set. She spends hours ironing the clothes she has washed. Already her new desk and her library table are covered with bills, letters, catalogues and junk mail. I hope that means that the dining room table will at last be clear, and that, for the first time in years, we can have guests to dinner.

What worries me is her apparent regression. I would not call her a radical feminist, but she surely was a liberated woman, even if she did cook all our microwave dinners. She has a management job, she has control of our bank account, she has her own savings, she has a car, she has a handsome wardrobe, she has season tickets to the Philharmonic, the Mark Taper and the Theater Center, she subscribes to the Book-of-the-Month Club, and she has a devoted and helpful husband.

What I want to know is how could a woman with all those advantages suddenly become enamored of washing and ironing clothes? It isn’t that a washing machine is a captivating or challenging toy, like a computer. No, I think it’s simply that she likes washing clothes and resents not having had a washing machine all those years.

If only one knew what they wanted.