My mother never worked
COMPREHENSSSION
1. What kind of work did Martha Smith do while her children were growing up? List some of the chores she performed?
The writer Donna Smith-Yackel’s mother did lots of work throughout her life. She was a mother of more than half dozen of children. While her children were growing up she had to do many works, tasks and household chores to sustain or to keep family going. After her marriage, she helped her husband in farming. She learned to set hens, and raise chickens, feed pigs, milk cows, plant and harvest a garden and carry every fruits and vegetables. She carried water nearly a quarter of a mile from well to fill her wash boilers in order to do her laundry on a scrub board. She also had to shuck grain, feed threshers, and shock and husk corn, feed corn pickers. In winter she sewed dresses, trousers and jackets for the children, housedresses, aprons for herself. She even made pillows from plucking each bird’s breast feathers, not only for her family but also for her relatives. Every morning and evening she milked cows, fed pigs and calves, cared for her chickens, picked eggs, cooked meals, washed dishes, rubbed floors. Apart from these works and household chores she had to look after her children. Even after her car accident and she was paralyzed she didn’t stop working. From her wheel chairs she canned pickles, baked bread, ironed clothes, wrote dozens of letters weekly to her friends and children.
2. Why isn’t Martha Smith eligible for a death benefit?
Martha smith was a very hard working woman who worked throughout her life to sustain or keep family going. She served her entire family and relatives doing all the household chores. But work done by her in home didn’t entitle her the dead benefit. She wasn’t eligible for the dead benefit because she