Pop 89: Apron Pocket Archives
By Madonna Hamel
Last week I performed Mother’s Apron twice in Medicine Hat, Alberta. It’s been a while since I’ve inhabited my apron-costumes, aprons, and the lives of a group of the women they represent, among them a mail-order bride, a boarding house owner, a Métis ‘sage femme,’ a member of the Women’s Land Army, and a P-39 pilot.
It takes 90 minutes to tell their stories and sing their songs, and I wasn’t sure if, at 67, I could still memorize all that. So, for a few months, I spent my evenings walking down Cemetery Road, past the Northwest Mounted Police marker pointing across a hayfield toward the crumbling homestead where my mother was born, then back home again, all the while rehearsing out loud, gesticulating like a crazy lady.
There’s a scene in Mother’s Apron where I’m telling a Jesuit priest about my experience on the land. He listens with interest as I try to explain the sensation that comes over me when I walk out onto it, alone, at dusk. “When I’m out there,” I say, “I get this intense sense of déjà vu. And it doesn’t go away. But it doesn’t stay.” “That’s the Holy longing,” he says. “Deep calling to deep.”
Every time I came to this point in my walking rehearsal, I stopped. And stood still. And listened. Graced by the very place I’m describing in my performance, fields rolling and glowing and waving all around me, I was—and am—astounded, standing in the midst of what my character marvels at. It’s like rehearsing Two Gentlemen of Verona in Verona, or Oklahoma in Tulsa.
Throughout summer, the field was full of crickets chirping their unbroken song. There were snipes winnowing and a tree with a nest of hawks, harassing me if I got too close. The odd fox or coyote gawked at me, cattle raised their heads long enough to see if I had any food with me. Near the end of August, there were storms every day, but always at a distance. The thunder rumbled and the lightning lassoed above me but stayed away so that I could continue walking my circuit from opening to closing scene.
The show came off without a hitch. I performed a matinee for a group of seniors, many of whom came dressed in aprons of their own. And for those who wanted to get into the mood, I’d brought a whole rack of aprons collected over the years. My sister lovingly ironed them for me, oohing and ahhing over each one. Each a work of art, resplendent with minute cross-stitching and embroidery, rick-rack and pleats, bibs and pockets to store treasures, secrets, hankies, and bobby pins. It’s heart-warming, but heart-breaking as well, to find the fine, time-consuming handiwork of women stuffed in the backs of thrift shops, on sale for a few dollars. Meanwhile, hundreds of factory-made replicas go for ten times the price in big-box stores.
I came to wearing aprons late in life. I’ve always liked them, but I never felt I “deserved” to wear one, because I didn’t cook a lot, and certainly not for big groups or a family of my own. I made meals for my dad after my mom died, but I still didn’t feel I deserved the uniform, which is what an apron is. “Men respect the uniform,” an old farmer told me when I moved here. I like that thought: just as a soldier salutes the uniform, even if he isn’t sure of the person inhabiting it, they understand the duties and services and sacrifices that come with it.
Once I settled into life in my village of Val Marie, I realized I qualified for the apron. I could join the ranks of women and men who cook and work in an apron, which is, in effect, a tool and toolkit, as well as shield and costume.
Mother’s Apron is ultimately a history play. It looks at the lives of women and their men from the 1890s to the post-Second World War through aprons and the archives stashed in their pockets. But there came a time when the apron was perceived by young women as a kind of ball and chain, hitching women to the kitchen against their will. And to suggest a child grew up tied to their mother’s apron strings was considered an insult. So, I understand why some women, for a few decades, refused to bind themselves in aprons.
But here’s an interesting fact: before WWII, women wore sturdy aprons with bibs and pockets. The kitchen was their domain—the hearth of the home, the engine that feeds the worker. Then came the war, and women were uncharacteristically “allowed,” even encouraged, to work outside the home—on farms, in the air, on the assembly line. When the men returned after the war, they were expected to forget and forfeit their agency and abilities, to give their jobs back to the men who needed them. While many were more than happy to do so, many others discovered how much they loved farming, building, and flying.
One of the final scenes in Mother’s Apron is a conversation between Annie—a Land Army woman, happy to return to her kitchen, her true domain—and Dell, a former P-39 pilot. “Haven’t you heard,” says Dell, “they are telling us the kitchen is no longer our domain. It’s the bedroom now.” “Really,” scoffs Annie. “Who decides these things? I spend a lot more time in me kitchen than I do my bedroom!”
The new domain removed the bib from the sturdy apron and gave us coquettish cocktail and French maid aprons. Sexy, but not our idea. I mean—there’s nowhere to put anything, is there? So, the next time a young woman poo-poos the apron, remind her—it’s our tool and tool-belt, our uniform, our shield and flag. I’ll take the tool belt over the garter belt any day.