January 22, 2009

• Thankless Tasks

  I was thinking this morning about someone that I went to school with and a conversation that he and I had shortly after I was married.  He used to come to the house to see me after I was married and we used to have talks about all kinds of things.  This guy is a very sick man but at the time I was not aware of his illness.  I was shocked when I had heard that he had been admitted to a mental institution for treatments.  I used to enjoy our times together because it was good conversation that made both of us think about things.  (and my husband didn’t mind him coming over at all, perhaps he sensed that there was something wrong and that this fellow needed the company.)

  One of the talks we had started with a comment that he made to me about how he couldn’t be a wife and mother because he would go crazy doing all the thankless tasks that women do over and over again.  (I happened to be folding laundry at the time)  I didn’t take offense at what he said but countered with the fact that a lot of what men do is also “thankless” if you define it as doing the same job over and over again and it never seems to be done and stay done. 

  Since that day that conversation has often come back to me.  The conclusion that we came to eludes me but the feeling I have about the term thankless tasks has stayed with me all this time.  Are we here on this earth to be given thanks for the tasks that we perform?  We teach our children to thank those who do things for them, especially when what is done is something that is not compelled.  But a line from the liturgy of the Church comes to mind,  “the very fact that we want to thank you is a gift from you…….”  Our thanks to God is what matters not the thanks that we give to or get from each other, not that we should stop thanking each other for favors done or gifts given.

  I remember the first time that one of my children thanked me for something that I did and I knew they were really aware of what had gone into what I had done for them.  It was when I made my daughter’s First Communion Dress.

  

  I worked for months on that dress.  I had saved for a long time to buy imported fabric for it.  I planned what I would do and carefully cut and traced beautiful and intricate embroidery patterns on pieces of the fabric.  In the evenings for months I worked at embroidering the designs that would encircle the skirt and the design that is on the bodice. 

  Then came the day that I was going to put it all together.  One week before the big day.  I had plenty of time.  The worst was over and all that needed to be done was to sew the pieces together.  I started to set in all of the lace diamonds that would surround the embroidery that I had painstakingly done.  I took the completed skirt to the sink to wash out the marking pen (a kind that I had used hundreds of times on other lesser projects) and it wouldn’t come out.  I washed and washed and it not only wouldn’t come out but the lace that I had so lovingly put in and shaped into the diamonds that would encircle the skirt all dissolved.  I stood there and cried as 10 little embroidered panels floated in the bathroom sink and the shreds of lace went down the drain.  What was I to do?  First Communion was only a week away and I had no more imported fabric left and no time to order more and get it here.  The bodice and sleeves were done but there was no skirt.

  I put the whole thing away and deliberately forgot about it until the day before.  I prayed and prayed and finally I swallowed my pride, for that is what it was.  Pride in my workmanship and my ability as a seamstress.  I had let my pride get in the way of what I was making the dress for.  I went to the local fabric store and bought enough fabric to make a new skirt.  I bought some wide pink ribbon to make a sash so that no one could tell that there were two different fabrics in that dress.  I borrowed a friends sewing machine that does embroidery and did a decorative stitch outlining the scallops on the bottom and sewed the lace along the scallops that I had originally intended to use on the other skirt.  I sewed fine pink ribbon at the points of each scallop and tied them in bows to make it look a little fancier and presented the finished dress to my daughter. 

  

  

  She looked at it and she burst into tears and declared it more beautiful than the original.  She said that Jesus would love her in it and that was all that mattered.  I will never forget how she looked as she went forward to receive Our Lord the first time.  No thankless task this.  The thanks I got was forgiveness from Our Lord for letting my pride get away from me and from my daughter for helping her look beautiful to meet Jesus for the first time.

  • 10:45 am
  • 7 Comments