I\/IY MOTHER NEVER WORKEI)

I
Donna Smith-Yachel

Although this essay, which was first published ln Women: A

Journal of Liberation in 1975, draws on personal experience, it
mahes a pointed statement about what society thinhs of "women's
worh." According to federal law, a uoman who is a homemaher is
entitled to Social Security benefits only through the earnings of her
husband. Therefore, a homemaher who becomes disabled receiues no
disability benefits, and her husband and children are allowed no
suruiuors' benefits if she should die. Although this lau¡ has been
challenged in the courts, a uornan who does not work for wages
outside the home is still not entitled to Social Security benefits in
her oun right. Without explicitly stating her thesis, Donna Smith-
Yackel comments on this situation in her nanatiue.

"Social Security Office." (The voice answering the telephone l

sounds very self-assured.)
"I'm calling about...I...my mother just died...I was told to 2
call you and see about a. .. death-benefit check, I think they call
it..."
"I see. Was your mother on Social Security? How old was she?" 3

"Yes...shewas seventy-eight...." 4

"Do you know her number?" 5

"No . . . I, ah. . . don't you have a record?" 6

"Certainly. I'lI look it up. Her name?" 7

"Smith. Martha Smith. Or maybe she used Martha Ruth Smith? s

. . . Sometimes she used her maiden name . . . Martha Jerabek
Smith."
"If you'd care to hold on, I'll check our records-it'll be a few e

minutes."
ttYgs. ." to
Her love letters-to and from Daddy-were in an old box, tied with 11

ribbons and stiff, rigid-with-age leather thongs: 1918 through 1920;

hers written on stationery from the general store she had worked in
full-time and managed, single-handed, after her graduation from
high school in 1913; and his, at first, on YMCA or Soldiers and Sailors
Club stationery dispensed to the fighting men of World War I. He
wooed her thoroughly and persistently by mail, and though she
reciprocated all his feelings for her, she dreaded marriage. . . .
85
86 NARRATION

"It's so hard for me to decide when to have my wedding day- D

that's all I've thought about these last two days. I have told you
dozens of times that I won't be af'raid of married life, but when it
comes down to setting the date and then picturing myself a married
woman with half a dozen or more kids to look after, it just makes me
sick. . . . I am weeping right now-I hope that some day I can look
back and say how foolish I was to dread it all."
They marridd in February, 192I, and began farming. Their first 1rl
baby, a daughter, was born in January, 1922, when my mother was
26 years old. The second baby, a son, was born in March, 1923. They
were renting farms; my father, besides working his own fields, also
was a hired man for two other farmers. They had no capital initially,
and had to gain it slowly, working from dawn until midnight every
day. My town-bred mother learned to set hens and raise chickens,
feed pigs, milk cows, plant and harvest a garden, and can every fruit
and vegetable she could scrounge. She carried water nearly a
quarter of a mile from the well to fill her wash boilers in order to do
her laundry on a scrub board. She learned to shuck grain, feed
threshers, shock and husk corn, feed corn pickers. In September,
1925, the third bab¡, came, and in June,1927, the fourth child-both ' ,

daughters. In 1930, my parents had enough money to buy their own

farm, and that March they moved all their livestock and belongings
themselves, 55 miles over rutted, muddy roads.
In the summer of 1930 my mother and her two eldest children t4
reclaimed a 40-acre field from Canadian thistles, by chopping them
all out with a hoe. In the other fields, when the oats and flax began
to head out, the green and blue of the crops were hidden by the
bright yellow of wild mustard. My mother walked the fields day
after day, pulling each mustard plant. She raised a new flock of baby
chicks-5O0-and she spaded up, planted, hoed, and harvested a
half-acre garden.
During the next spring their hogs caught cholera and died. No rr
cash that fall.
And in the next year the drought hit. My mother and father rl
trudged from the well to the chickens, the well to the calf pasture,
the well to the barn, and from the well to the garden. The sun came
out hot and bright, endlessly, day after day. The.cfops shriveled and
died. They harvested halfthe corn, and ground the olñer half stalks
and all, and fed it to the cattle as fodder. With the price at four cents
a bushel for the harvested crop, they couldn't afford to haul it into
town. They burned it in the flurnace for fuel that winter.
In 1934, in February, when the dust was still so thick in the n
Minnesota air that my parents couldn't always see from l,hr. l'rousc t«r
 Nlllll YA(llil,ll, i l\1 \' M()'l'llt,ltr Nt,lvt,)tt wotilil,lt) 87

llrt. lr:rrn, their liflh child-a fourth daughter-was born. My father

lrrrrt..tl rabbits daily, and my mother stewed them, fried them,
r';rrr)cd them, and wished out loud that she could taste hamburger
or(:o more. In the fall the shotgun brought prairie chickens, ducks,
¡rlrcasant, and grouse. My mother plucked each bird, carefully re-
rrr.r'ving the breast feathers for pillows.
ln the winter she sewed night after night, endlessly, begging 1¡l
.rrst-offclothing from relatives, ripping apart coats, dresses, blouses,
;uld trousers to remake them to fit her four daughters and son.
l,)vcry morning and every evening she milked cows, fed pigs, and
.irlves, cared for chickens, picked eggs, cooked meals, washed dishes,
st:rubbed floors, and tended and loved her children. In the spring she
¡rlirnted a garden once more, dragging pails of water to nourish and
sustain the vegetables for the family. In 1936 she lost a baby in her
sixth month.
In 1937 her fifth daughter was born. She was 42 years old. In 1939 19
rr second son, and in 1941 her eighth child-and third son.
But the war had come, and prosperity of a sort. The herd of cattle 20
had grown to 30 head; she still milked morning and evening. Her
garden was more than a half acre-the rains had come, and by now
Lhe Rural Electricity Administration and indoor plumbing. Still she
sewed-dresses and jackets for the children, housedresses and aprons
fbr herself, weekly patching ofjeans, overalls, and denim shirts. She
still made pillows, using feathers she had plucked, and quilts every
.year-intricate patterns as well as patchwork, stitched as well as
l,ied-all necessary bedding for her family. Every scrap of cloth too
small to be used in quilts was carefully saved and painstakingly
sewed together in strips to make rugs. She still went out in the fields
to help with the haying whenever there was a threat of rain.
In 1959 my mother's last child graduated from high school. A vear 21

later the cows were sold. She still raised chickens and ducks, plucked
feathers, made pillows, baked her own bread, and every year made
a new quilt-now for a married child or for a grandchild. And her
garden, that huge, undying symbol of sustenance, was as large and
cared for as in all the years before. The canning, and now freezing,
continued.
In 1969, on a June afternoon, mother and father started out for 22
town so that she could buy sugar to make rhubarb jam for a daugh-
ter who lived in Texas. The car crashed into a ditch. She was para-
lyzed from the waist down.
In 1970 her husband, my father, died. My mother struggled to 23
regain some competence and dignity and order in her tife. At the
rehabilitation institute, where they gave her physical therapy and
88 NARRATION

trained her to live usefully in a wheelchair, the therapist told me:

"She did fifteen pushups today-fifteen! She's almost seventy-five
years old! I've never known a woman so strong!"
From her wheelchair she canned pickles, baked bread, ironed
clothes, wrote dozens of letters weekly to her friends and her "half
doz,en or more kids," and made three patchwork housecoats and one
quilt. She Ehde balls and balls of carpet rags-enough for five rugs.
And kept all her love letters.
"I think I've found your mother's records-Martha Ruth Smith;
married to Ben F. Smith?
'Yes, that's right." "l

"Well, I see that she was getting a widow's pension. . . ."

'Yes, that's right."
"WeII, your mother isn't entitled to our $255 death benefit."
"Not entitled! But why?" . l

The voice on the telephone explains patiently:

"Well, you see-your mother never worked."