In response to recent posts by Jody, Landismom and Chichimama, and an old one by Mimi.
This summer emptying the dishwasher was my son's job. He called it "the dish cycle": clean to dirty and back again, from the dishwasher to the cabinet to the table and back again, over and over, over and over, over and over. At first it amused him but by the end of the season he was almighty tired of the dish cycle.
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When my kids were tiny everything was so hard; I didn't know how to be either a parent or a housewife and had to learn it all — how to care for a child with a fever, how to cook a hot breakfast for four, how to entertain guests over the holidays, how to choose a daycare — all that stuff was new to me, mysterious, and though exhausting, though often overwhelming, it was interesting.
Now I have become a wife and mother. I'm no longer in the process of becoming. It's done. I've transformed.
I no longer have to blaze the trail. I just have to walk it.
It ought to make me feel victorious, don't you think?
5 comments:
I, too, am almighty tired of the dish cycle.
And not feeling very victorious either.
I'm hoping to feel victorious when they get accepted to college. But maybe then I'll just be apprehensive that they'll fail to graduate?
Weeeeeird. I just finished writing about my dishwasher about 5 minutes ago. And I'm settling into the competence, and things are getting easier ...
And I love your idea of not blazing the trail, but of walking it. That's just a perfect image. I'm glad you're feeling a little more settled in yourself.
I just read a timely essay by Michael Chabon about the unrealistic expectations of mothers vs. expectations of fathers. A father has done a "good job" if he shows up to the little league game. The mother chauffeurs 20 kids to the game, bakes the snacks, and coordinates all the fundraising and she is just "doing what is expected."
You can't be in it for the praise, I guess. As monotonous and unrecognized as your labors are. Maybe if you guys rotated chores so at least it wouldn't be the same, unrecognized labor day after day?
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