I noted yesterday’s comments. Please note mine: I fully intended to return today and finish this story. I love Martha Ballard.

AND I proceeded to prove it and to finish my balcony story—and then I lost it as I was about to save and publish. Aargh

I’ll try again….

I came across Martha Ballard when I was doing my reading for my book, Reading Between the LInes: The Diaries of Women (Key Porter Books, 1995) She was an 18th-century New England midwife who kept an account book recording her cases, turning it into a record of her daily life, including her complaints about her husband’s and her son’s neglect. I’ll quote from my book (fair usage), page 131:

“Martha Ballard had a continuing conflict and estrangement with her son Jonathan. Apparently Jonathan was a hot-tempered man, the cause of his own considerable troubles and Martha was a strong-minded woman, too proud to ask for help she felt should have been freely given. Martha expresses a universal complaint in a comment about her son: ‘It is very strange that men cannot behave like rationall human beings.”

Well, I wasn’t rational either. I made ineffectual sarcastic and not-so-sublte comments, hoping that my son would come forward.

Finally I complained.

"All you have to do is ask,” he said.

So I issued a direct order, but I did say please and later - thank you.

And my balcony got wrapped.

I still miss it. I can’t wait for spring.