April was an exercise in fortitude
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Lately, every time someone compliments me on a task I’ve completed, I’ve answered them by saying, “Thank you. I’ve been working on the habit of fortitude.” And I guess I picked up that vernacular from reading a couple of Charlotte Mason books in recent years.
I started to ponder the fact, every time I said it, that I could not trace the precipitous repetition of this phrase back to a moment I consciously decided to undertake “the habit of fortitude.” Perhaps it was the moment I downloaded a relatively expensive app and started trying to rebuild a morning routine from scratch.
In any case, I look back on April and think, yes, I did work on personal fortitude. And I use that term in the most feeble sense possible. Some people endure pain and sickness with fortitude. Some people show great mental fortitude under stressful situations or occupations like law enforcement or men in combat. Me—I’m just working on actually getting the chicken carcass into the crockpot and making broth out of it instead of getting too overwhelmed, leaving it on the counter and throwing it out the next day. I’m working on putting the laundry away once I’ve folded it. I’m working on baking something to serve my Bible study guests twice a month.
Half-Way
Mr. H calls me “half-way.” “Half-way strikes again,” he says when he finds crumbs still on the counter after I said I wiped them down, or when I leave the dry goods on the counter after putting away the cold groceries, or when he finds a dank load of laundry in the washer three days later. He has learned to laugh it off and finish the job or watch me fly into an apologetic fluster as I finish it myself. But this is the kind of 21st century fortitude I’m work through.
It’s pathetic, but I’ll come to my own defense here. The other day I caught myself pondering out loud: “How am I supposed to teach the school, plan and shop for groceries, clean the house, write the posts, cook every meal essentially from scratch, bake all our bread, wash the clothes, play with the kids, tend the garden, volunteer at church, keep up with my friends…”
None of this is unique to me, but I do find it overwhelming to the point that I cannot finish most things in one go. It feels pointless to finish things when they will need to be repeated within, if not within less than, one day.
So, as I said, somewhere in this fog of incomplete tasks, the notion of fortitude emerged. I guess because I realized I was going to need it if I was going to be making all our food from scratch. You can’t quit half way on a loaf of bread. Technically, you can but it causes mental strife cause you know you’re a spineless goose and then gastrointestinal strife cause you have nothing to eat and you end up taking your half-way fanny out for Chick-Fil-A again.
It also helps build domestic fortitude learning that L-cysteine is a common ingredient in commercial breads, and if it’s not made from ground up duck feathers or hog hair, it’s made from human hair.1 Don’t shoot the messenger.
It’s okay to just start
So, did I succeed in building this habit? I rarely succeed in building habits. I can go strong on something for weeks and then quit one day. I recently did that with exercise. It was the smallest commitment of five minutes of movement first thing each morning. I did it without fail for three weeks in a row. Then I packed up and left for a short trip out of town and never did it again.
Committing myself to tasks with fortitude was no different. But I have found myself making little choices each day. Even if it’s just one thing that I stare down and say, “I can do that.” It still doesn’t mean I’ll finish, but isn’t getting started the hardest part? Yesterday it was taking five minutes to prune a few elderberry canes that have been infected with spindle worms. I didn’t finish, but I have always found it adequate to live by the FlyLady’s motto: “Housework done incorrectly still blesses your family.” If it weren’t for that mindset, I’d never start.
End of April Inventory
Here are some exertions I made in this spirit in the last couple of weeks:
The April Garden
The tiny spring harvests started coming in, the first being a handful of cilantro for a yogurt sauce. Followed by a few pea pods every day that I’ve been shelling and collecting in a freezer bag.
I noticed a couple of days ago that the elderberries are starting to come in—at least on the canes that haven’t been hollowed out by the spindle worms.
The April Kitchen
I made a salad for the first time in ages. This one was for a friend’s meal train, but I knew it was going to be outstanding so I bought extra of everything to make us one, too. I even made homemade balsamic vinaigrette! My oldest tried it and could not stop raving about how much he loved it.
My youngest is turning three in a couple of days, but we celebrated a little early. I really did not want to buy a pre-made cake from the store this time, but the early celebration caught me by surprise. I wasn’t prepared to do anything complex, so I threw together a chocolate cake at home and just melted a few chocolate chunks on top and served with a few more sprinkled on top.
And this was not an accomplishment, but it is something I like. I jokingly call our fridge “recession chic.” The other day Mr. H commented on how empty it was, saying, “We have no food!” I corrected him saying, “It’s great.” He asked for clarification on that and I explained, “It’s empty because we have eaten everything in it and there are no leftovers that have been forgotten or gone bad.”
I love being able to see everything we have, keep a few bulk ingredients (lately I’ve been really into putting pecans on everything) and seeing how many ways I can put those few things together. (Note: The fruit and vegetable drawers are not included here, so we do have a little more than what appears here.)
Other April End of the Month Accomplishments:
Another few quarts of home fermented yogurt
Two loaves of white bread from scratch
Today, I fell asleep three separate times and ran the dishwasher. That was all I could bring myself to do. So, today, my exercise in fortitude was just finishing this journal entry.
Tomorrow will bring a different wave of mental stimulations and who knows which way that will turn the tides of productivity. I’m ready to surf or sink, whichever comes next. But it will probably be somewhere… half way.
https://www.directlinegroup.co.uk/en/news/brand-news/2016/bread-contains-a-protein-derived-from-human-hair--bananas-aren-t.html