After the Clean Sweep kickoff last weekend, I was reflecting on how much trash was out in those woods, and how little of a dent we made on the overall amount. Even though we worked so hard for so many hours, with so many people! But I also realized that this didn’t remotely worry me!. That’s because it’s such a perfect fit for the Motherline…
What does Mother mean, if not perseverance? If your kid was sick and kept you up every night for the past week and you haven’t slept, you’re still going to stay awake and care for the kid tonight and the next night and for however long it takes. As you incorporate kids into daily life, you learn to get your work done a little her and a little there – you don’t get to do it all at once because just when you get started, there is always someone who needs food or a bandaid or a ride to practice, so you stop, and you come back to your project later. And you keep coming back to it, for however long it takes.
I usually feel like making progress on my homestead goes about as fast as a glacier moves. This can be very frustrating when I know I could grow more food or maintain my place better, if only there were more time! But then, surprisingly enough, things do actually get finished every once in a while, and over time the little victories do add up. Eventually the garden is in and the woodshed is built and the firewood is cut, and the only way it happened was a little every day, inexorably taking tiny steps forward. Over glacially slow scales of time.
As a mom, my work flow continually reminds me of a glacier. Nothing could be slower than a glacier – but at the same time, nothing could be stronger. My new garden will be great, eventually, and even though progress is slow, I have absolutely no doubt that it will happen. Same with the trash in our woods, spread across our watershed. We have the mothers leading the project, and progress might sometimes seem a little slow, but there is absolutely no doubt about whether it will get picked up. You just can’t stop a glacier.
-Cindy