Our Myopia of Gaia's Invisible Labor

Strewn on the concrete floor of the mudroom were summertime hats. A variety of baseball hats, wide brimmed floppy sun hats, Polly Hill Arboretum monogrammed bucket hats, disintegrating straw sun hats, my husband’s sturdy sun hat purchased at a cricket match, the visor from my childhood with my name emblazoned on it, the yellow rainproof fishing hat from my parents - all piled on top of several neck gaitors from our visit to the tropics. 

I wiped drawer with a damp rag. Then I turn to the closet and dump out all of the wintertime hats onto the floor.

Hand knitted misshapen beanies, two knit caps advertising the children’s summer camps, the too small trapper hat I purchased in college, the light green one someone accidentally put in the dryer jumbled together next to the summer hats. 

I walked to the mechanical room and put the gaitors into the bag with the beach stuff. Along the way, I saw a pair of Dragon’s socks and put them into the washing machine. On the way back, I noticed Bean’s plastic bracelet and took a detour to her room to put it on her desk.

I placed all of the summer hats in the closet drawer, slid the door shut, and turned to the pile of winter hats.

Some of these are way too small for the kids, time to cull. 

Wow, we have a lot of hats.

I sat on the ground and finished rolling all of the warm, soft wintery hats - tucking the gloves and mittens alongside.

So beautiful, all of these colors.

I opened a new drawer, dumping all of the adult winter gloves and hats onto the ground, wiping the sides and corners with the damp cloth. 

These gloves have holes in them, that is not going to work.

Mending pile? While I am at it, I might as well organize the scarf drawer.

I opened the bulging scarf drawer. 

Why do we have five different USA soccer scarves? They are crowding out things I like! Putting those into their own container in the closet. I can use that soft basket I found in the garage…. Perfect. 

Hmmm, I don’t need to have antique scarves in here, those can go into my stocking drawer. 

I grabbed the soft silks and walked to my closet. Along the way, I picked up the extra duvet that came into the house when we started moving Meme out of her apartment.

Scarves into the drawer. And this duvet, hold on, let me bring out the other duvets and then we can choose which one we want to keep.

I hauled out from the floor a plastic bin with three other containers in it and put it on my bed.

I went back to the closet and opened my stocking drawer.

Why am I using Mom’s nice cloth drawer dividers in a drawer I barely open?

I extracted my 30 year old stockings and hosiery from the nice blue and white bins. 

I can use these organizers in our drawer so I don’t have to wade through huge camouflage hunting mittens to find my small black gloves. Hooray!

Placing the bins onto the shelf above the drawers I noted the box of 1000 assorted color origami papers.

I bought this for Dragon two years ago and was apportioning out paper as needed. He is no longer doing origami, so I can put this upstairs with the other art supplies. 

My eye caught the plastic bin with the duvets. 

Okay, let’s see what is inside of this.

I wrested out two plastic containers with labeled duvets. Tucked into the bottom of the bin was a baby pillow.

That can go into Dragon’s room, he likes using baby pillows.

The box of origami papers went on the steps with the tattered gloves. I proceeded to Dragon’s room with the baby pillow, placing it on a high closet shelf. 

Oh! Here is that mushroom sweater that still fits him. It shouldn’t be hung up, he will never notice it. 

I took the mushroom sweater off of the hanger, folded it, and placed it with his sweaters. 

His wrists were poking out of his blue one yesterday.

Grabbing the too small blue sweater, I withdrew with the blue sweater to the mudroom to continue the tasks of organizing the adult glove drawer with the new blue and white organizers from my stocking drawer. 

The morning continued.

At the end of two hours or so five drawers had been organized, sundry small items had been slotted into the correct rooms, and there was a pile of items to donate and to mend.

All members of the house benefited from my time on this. Winter hats and gloves are now findable, the right sizes, and accessible. The whole getting dressed routine will be smoother and less stressful as a result of my time and attention.

I spent that time engaged in, quite literally, “invisible work” - a term introduced by Arlene Kaplan’s 1987 seminal paper of the same name. Invisible Work:

is private; there is no audience beyond the family and the work is personalized for the family members who rate it as they please.. considerable effort and attention goes into a woman's provisioning the household and preparing meals. The work is "customized,” as it were, to pick from the bewildering array of mass-produced products those that suit the budget of the household and the tastes of individual family members. Furthermore, it requires continual checking and policing to note what stocks are running low. Even when tasks can be delegated to others, it is usually the wife and mother who notices what needs to be done and when. The others do not take this responsibility and so do not "see" the task until they are directed. Planning, restocking, improvising, and adapting to family quirks and demands require effort…

Kaplan goes on to talk about the changes that affect a society when there is a shift away from volunteering where people can no longer host church dinners because they are single parents and have no time - the institution and the church community changes as a result of losing those dinners. 

If we examine changes closely, we can see what has been added or taken away in our society by the presence or absence of efforts that we have come to take for granted. We appreciate and want the efforts that make our institutions more workable though we wouldn't credit most of it as work.

“That we have come to take for granted” - the crux of the entire thing. 

Kaplan’s paper was written nearly 40 years ago (wow). I am grateful there is a continuing and ongoing discourse around invisible labor and its disproportionate allotment to marginalized groups based on ongoing power dynamics and gender imbalances. I want to bring up another thread in all of this. A thread I think has been overlooked.

In fact, it is not a thread.

It is the container, the essence, the bija seed sound, the Platonic TRUTH dancing in front of the fire that casts the sociological term/human concept of “invisible labor” on the cave wall.

Of course our society takes “for granted” the work of individuals who cook, clean, maintain, and ensure the smooth functioning of our world of stuff and convenience. It is our entire model of life. For most of us, collectively in our Global North paradigm, take for granted that which Gaia gives us.

Air.

Land.

Flora.

Fauna.

Water.

Fire.

To make a short and inadequate list…

According to Arkan Lushwala’s Deer & Thunder; Indigenous Ways of Restoring the World, there is:

a river of vital energy that constantly flows on Earth, that is fed by the energy of human beings…[the] very important and little known purpose of human life is to constantly deliver energy that feeds the formation of plasma in the Earth’s core… as we give vitality to the Earth, we receive vitality from the Earth.

Apparently one can either feed the Earth deliberately - through song, prayer, ceremony, dance, music, joy etc. If not fed deliberately, the Earth will take the energy she needs from our suffering - war, emotional drama, heavy emotions, feeding our Cranky Monster, etc.

One way or another, humans feed the Earth that feeds us… In the Andes, as in all ancient indigenous nations of the world, it is not out of obligation that we make offerings that bring life and prevent violence… we do so tenderly, our hearts filled with joy and overflowing with gratitude for all that our Mother gives us…we can be food or we can be feeders, and this is a choice we have to make every day, many times a day.

This choice to put energy into the wheel of reciprocity is one we have to make many times a day. Energy in the form of attention, gratitude, NOTICING and then action.

The first step is noticing

And then action.

Amen