My daughter called me frantic the other night. It was 9pm, her basement was once again flooding after her and her boyfriend had spent nearly the entire day bailing water from it. The water to the old home that they shared had been turned off in the area that they were working but now fecal matter was among the debris swimming around their feet. “Help!”
As a single mother for twenty years, I knew exactly what to do and guessed properly exactly what the problem was. In the end, both my daughter and her boyfriend were extremely appreciative of my plumbing savvy as was their landlord.
“There is a big difference in being raised by a single mom who needed to know how to handle everything home and auto-related,” my daughter said, proudly. And as proud as she was, that shouldn’t be so, in my opinion.
All women need to understand basic survival skills in this regard, especially given the circumstances of today when such professionals are dwindling in numbers and enormously time constrained to boot.
Sure, it’s nice to know how to redo a table, but that skill won’t seem so amazing when the only toilet in your house is clogged, your plunger doesn’t help, and you have no idea the depth of the problem an auger can solve (or what it even is, for that matter). Your kids certainly won’t be impressed with your varnish job either when you tell them to get a roll of toilet paper along with a plastic bag, and find a bush. They’d trade that table for that auger any day.
Most women won’t be reconstructing their own home. That’s true. But they may be in need of covering exterior spigots properly whose lines can’t be drained due to ‘lack of access’. Knowing what to do in these small instances can save bundles in money and inconvenience. Whether a husband isn’t around or is, women need to know how to handle these little but big jobs.
Over the last month alone, I’ve hooked up my generator more than once, pulled dents out of a car, diagnosed a Pumptec problem, caulked a hole in my shower, installed a lock on one of my doors, rescreened my porch, replaced cracked vinyl siding, installed solar lighting in my exterior doorways, and kept a friend from killing herself when she brainstormed combining bleach and Comet together to ensure her floors were cleaner than they had ever been before.
Society really needs to improve ‘equality of women’ when it comes to teaching them how to care for their homes and automobiles. This isn’t guy stuff but life stuff today — basic survival skills without question. Maybe it isn’t a glamorous topic, but it is central to survival as defined by the lives and realities of women currently. Not doing so puts every woman living in a home and driving a car behind the eight ball. We need to retool the feminine to include tools and how to use them according to actual circumstances and requirements.
Sure it is great to know how to make a scrumptious meal on a dime. It’s even better to know how to repair a leaky roof on one too.
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Previously Published on medium
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