Mrs. Should

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  • Mrs. Should, I could murder you today!                                   

  •  Stifle or smother her maybe? 

  • Why can’t you take a holiday? 

  • I have helped you on                                   

  • With your coat, handed you your hat, bagged   

  • And baggaged you.  Just for one day I want   

  • To wave you away and let myself play.         

  • But honestly!  The nerve of the woman!      

  • She keeps coming back from the bus stop all

  • A flurry of “Mustn’t forgets!”   I bar          

  • The door and barricade myself in the      

  • Bedroom.    I take to my bed with the cat     

  • (Surely as good a role model of steely     

  • Indifference and determination                      

  • As I know.)        I pretend that I am again         

  •  A teenager, impervious to all                

  • Injunctions, enjoinders, wheedling at    

  • Conscience.  But it’s no good.  Hopeless even.  

  • My husband says I shouldn’t sack Mrs. Should. 

  •  After all, domestic help is so hard           

  • To find these days.  She needs managing though.

  • She’s become a bit of a bully of late.                

  • “Be Firm,” he counsels.   He advises, “Take Charge!” 

  •  It’s so hard to have this great guilt machine

  • Cluttering up living room.  “WASH THAT!” she shrieks, 

  • Sharp-eyed, noticing all.  Right down to the       

  • Flea dirt on the slipcovers.  She likes to clean

  • Does Mrs. Should.     Or rather, likes to            

  • Keep me busy.    Oh, so verrrrrry busy.                                      

  • So for my next project                                   

  •  I shall take apart the Great Guilt Machine.          

  • I shall treat it to a folk cure for clocks which         

  •  Time has stopped.  First, dismantle from case.    

  • Boil workings. Add a handful of soda.       

  • When water is black remove from heat and          

  •  Oil with a tad of tractor grease.  Pop into a 

  • Moderate oven with the Sunday joint.               

  •  By Sunday evensong that clock chimes like    

  • A dreaming spire.  A very Mrs.Should 

  • Remedy.  Always so happy to help.     

This week in Corrogue…

 Tony requested that I post this poem as a companion piece to this week’s Blessing for YOU! It’s part of a trilogy of poems with the second one about Mrs. Should’s cousin Mrs. Must and the finale is Christmas with Mrs. Demento. Mrs. Should and Mrs. Must have finally unhinged our heroine and all the tinkly musak has finally made her go off her rocker. Everyone has this inner voice about should and must. Some of those are useful.  The ‘Thou shalt not’ of the Ten Commandments does spring to mind. But that is the point. They say what we should not do.  They are ten simple pieces of advice on what it’s really not cool to act out. They don’t create this never ending and increasingly demanding list of  ‘I should be doing this’. Instead of…what? ‘I really must do…’ Just what exactly? Should the weather be warmer just because April should be?  According to whom?  My impatience with the weather acting in an unpredictable way will not make the soil warm any faster. But the gardening books and seed packets say I should be doing such and such in April!  But April is behaving much more like March and occasionally like February. After five years of looking at the lie of our acre of land I am squelching the impulse to press on just because it is April. This is very uncharacteristic. Nature has it’s own wisdom and it’s own timing that has nothing to do with calendars or clocks. It’s an enormously resourceful teacher but not in a didactic way. It will get around to everything in it’s own time. It does feel a bit unnatural not to press on with certain tasks.  But I am trying to pay more attention to my intuition then that roaring Mrs. Should who wants me to tick off the  ‘To Do’ list for April.  I am trying to not take responsibility for everything – especially not the weather. What Mrs. Should never realised is that there are some things we are never meant to control. Those matters that are out of our control are not necessarily an enemy to be eradicated. They are just like the phases of the moon, an eclipse of the sun, or the shifting of tectonic plates. Discernable, sometimes understandable, but not always explicable. © 2006 Bee Smith