Nobody moves the dirt like this woman can

Are We There Yet?

Lori Clinch

Following 18 grueling months of hard work and backbreaking labor, we’ve completed enough of our new home that we can actually live in it.

Although some of the woodwork isn’t in place and I’d kill for a laundry room door, it’s nice to just be settled and call this place home.

Over the last months I’ve learned to bend rebar, drive a dump truck, set trusses and install windows. Most importantly, I’ve learned that whatever one charges to install wood floors, it’s not enough.

Although my husband feels I was made for this kind of work, it’s been tough on a girly girl such as myself.

When I finished grouting the tiles last month, I stood tall for the first time in a year. I brushed the dust off my knees and loudly announced to an empty room that I, Lori A. Clinch, had completed my last task as a construction worker. I’d nailed my last nail, bent my last length of rebar and cut my last board. I was hanging my hard hat and going back to being a woman who was ignorant of the world of hammers and plumb-Bobs. Manicures loomed in the distance, long lunch hours were calling my name and I went all giddy at the prospect of spending an entire day without chore boots and kneepads.

Although he let me dwell in my retirement for nearly a month, my husband felt the need to draw me out last week to assist him with dirt work in the yard. I fought him tooth and nail. I stated my case like a lawyer with an objective. I sent petitions around the countryside defending my cause, made phone calls to the right people and stood out in the front yard with a cup of coffee and a large sign that said, “Stop the Madness.”

With all of my efforts exhausted and no avenues left, I pulled out the big guns and went straight to the top.

“Say,” I said to his mother as I patted her arm, “you raised this man. Surely you have some pull. Tell him I’m done being a construction worker. Tell him that my nails are beginning to grow again and that the pit marks on my face have begun to heal. Tell him that he and his band of children can work the yard, and that he doesn’t need any further assistance from me. You can do that for me, can’t you, Mom?”

“You bet I will,” she responded with a set jaw. “I’ll tell him that you’re a woman, and that he’s put you through enough. I’ll set him straight.”

When Pat returned to the kitchen table, she waited for him to pull up a chair. She stared at him for a minute and then said, “Pat, Lori doesn’t want to do man’s work anymore. She has dishes to do.”

“Nobody can move dirt like Lori can,” Pat said with pride. “Besides, the kids and I kinda get a kick out of watching her work a shovel.”

She didn’t even argue with him. Instead of standing her ground, pounding her fist or putting forth a single “I mean it,” she simply turned to me and said, “I’ve done all I can.”

Prior to that day, I thought that insulating the walls in subzero temperatures, sporting a Gore-Tex suit and an unhappy disposition, was as bad as it got.

But I learned that afternoon, out in the yard, that there is nothing worse than working, seemingly on the face of the sun, with that man of mine. It was 358 degrees if it was 100, and instead of taking refuge like the normal people do, we were out there on the hard ground, pulling weeds and working the soil.

The flies swarmed about us, shade was nowhere to be found and the grass was 3 feet tall and as dry as a burning set of chapped lips. I should have been inside, I could have been browsing brochures for a fine new collection of window treatments, or surfing the net for a cute pair of Manolo Blahniks to replace my work boots.

But no, I had to work in that heated dust bowl with the menfolk.

I held out for a good 40 minutes or better before I miscalculated with the shovel and hit myself in the shin. It hurt like a monkey. I screamed, I cursed, I broke into a colorful vocabulary that included the s-word and insisted that all of the earth was a hellhole not fit for mankind. I then turned on my chapped heel and stomped toward the house.

“Do you think we’ve pushed her too far?,” I heard my oldest son ask as I passed.

“Nah,” replied my husband of many years. “Deep down, she loves this kind of work.”

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book “Are We There Yet?” Her e-mail address is [email protected].