There's a housewife, and she lives on Mars. Now, Mars is a cool place to live, and she likes it there, although vacuuming up red dust every day can be annoying.

She's the only one in the family who vacuums up red dust. And cooks, cleans, washes clothes (did you know that red dust clogs up washing machines?), and sundry other household tasks. She's learned how to take apart the washing machine and clean the red dust out of it, and how to fix the vacuum when the red dust gets through the filters and clogs up the motor.

Her husband works long hours, and makes good money, and provides her with every comfort. Why, they've been able to pave the red dust for almost a mile around the house, thereby reducing that annoying problem. He's promised to pave another half mile next year when he gets his promotion. He's a good, kind, loving man, but he's never home for her to enjoy those qualities. Once in a while, when work is slow, he comes home early and rests in front of the video.

Her son is a good student and an athlete, and she's proud of him, of course. He works hard for his grades, and he takes out the garbage the instant she tells him to (a three-mile round trip to the dumpster over dunes of red dust, wearing a re-breather, isn't to be taken for granted). He's busy too, with school activities and friends, so he's rarely home any more. She misses the years when he was growing up and still needed her.

Once in a while, she goes a little stir-crazy, what with her world being reduced to the home and shopping. The four-mile round trip to the stores over dunes of red dust is annoying, to say the least, and the wheels of the shopping trolley freeze up when the red dust gets into them. She's learned to keep a can of lubricant with her when she goes shopping so that she can un-clog the wheels.

When she feels herself going stir-crazy she walks a mile and a half south of their lovely home in suburban Marseria (although how one house constitutes a suburb is beyond her), and works on her garden. The scientists brought oxygen and water to Mars (neither in sufficient quantity), but they couldn't figure out how to make things grow.

With instinct and gardening wisdom passed down through the women of her family for generations, she's managed to make a few small plants grow in her garden. She made dew catchers out of tin foil and chicken wire, to give the plants water. She created sun filters when the ultraviolet light damaged the leaves of one plant. She has nurtured and tended her garden for two years now, and it is growing.

Every chance she gets, she goes out to her garden and does what the men in their laboratories have failed to do. She makes things grow.

Copyright © 2002 M. J. Kramer. All rights reserved