Home, making

That I can tell, there is no word for “homemaking” in Nepali. There are words for cooking, words for cleaning, words for doing a whole host of the pieces that make up what we westerners would throw under the banner of maintaining a house.

But no word for the singular act of being the person who is responsible for setting the stage for the safety, the peace, the beauty, and the joy of a home.

It’s no wonder, really. So many families here dwell in places I can’t put words to: cinder block walls, fabric draped over gaping doorways, dirt floors, animals literally competing for space– and food– with children. There are many, many fabulous homes, of course. But the reality is that most of the people fortunate enough to occupy those spaces are only a generation or two removed from an existence that was nowhere near as luxurious.

But for those of us who do live with windows that open and close, and floors that aren’t home to burrowing insects, the expectation– no, the reality— is that a chunk of the household duties will be hired out. Didis (house helpers) are a part of life for everyone I know; they are part of the family, but not. Women who scrub our toilets and sweep our floors and generally do whatever the family asks. They are the quiet cogs that keep the house working in the midst of a hundred daily challenges unique to life in a developing nation.

In short, a didi makes it possible for the work of running a family to get done despite power outages, unsafe water, constant dirt and the threat of a myriad little germs that would love to colonize a human body.

And you know, I’m grateful. I’m so very grateful for our didi, who has managed to keep the floors devoid of smut and the table scraped clean of layers of dried daal bhat. She has freed me from hours of mopping stairs on my hands and knees with rags, and given me back the ability to read The Pokey Little Puppy with an eager 22 month-old.  There is simply no way to express how wonderful that feels.

And yet …

And yet, I miss it.

I miss homemaking.

Odd, the things that we pine for when pulled from our natural habitat. I miss trees and wind and decent coffee. But what I miss the most is managing my home. I miss planning two weeks’ worth of menus in front of my cookbooks and my Pinterest account, and scheduling around the comings and going of my clan. I miss the smell of lemon oil on my wood floors, and smiling at the smeared handprints on our sliding glass door, memorizing them before wiping them away. I miss balancing a toddler on my hip as I prepped things for the crockpot in the morning, and smelling dinner cooking all day long. I miss fluffing pillows and vacuuming floors. I miss the quick pick-up time before Daddyman came home in the evenings.

I miss making a house a home. I miss being the person whose job it was to bring that kind of tranquility to a space.

I recognize that a big part of my longing is part of the emotional response of living in a house that came furnished. Convenient, yes. But … lacking. I did not choose this couch, this chair, this Couldn’t Be Less Kid-Friendly glass-topped dining room table. Gold and burgundy (not my colors) greet me everywhere, winking, and reminding me that this is not a space that I designed. The heavy curtains will, no doubt, be very welcome when the cold settles in and we are huddling in, trying to keep warm. But … floor-length curtains. And sheers. I’m a leave-the-windows-naked-and-put-a-valance-on-top girl.

I am challenged. And yes, I know how First World, Spoiled American selfish this sounds.

But here I am. Here we are. All of us, doing our best to keep things clean, to make them livable, to get on with the business of the work we were called to do. We’ve al made sacrifices to be here, to make this leap. Homemaking– at least as I knew it– is one of my sacrifices.