Wade: Hello.
Me: Here is why we need to buy that house your mom called about.
Wade: Yes?
Me: Huge master suite, blah blah blah, with HIS AND HERS BATHROOMS, INCLUDING WHIRLPOOL TUB.
Wade: Okay! Make an offer!
Me: Your own bathroom. WITH A WHIRLPOOL TUB.
Wade: Make ‘em an offer.
Me: It’s the bathroom you’ve been dreaming of.
Wade: Yep.
Me: I’ll see you later.
Wade: Okay.
Yesterday I wrote about how I am giving up multitasking for Lent, and a couple of you said, very wisely, “Good luck with that!” I assume you meant it in a hearty, supportive way, not a whatever, crazy lady kind of way. Right? Right.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to sound smug about my Lenten resolution. The deal is this: recently, I’ve been scrambling to get through the day. First we had all those snow days, then the kids were sick, which meant that I had people underfoot all day every day, people who were small and bored and germy, which shot my kids-go-to-school-and-I-get-things-done routine all to hell. Then, right as the sickness set in, I started writing for BlogHer and Blogging Baby. It took me three days to figure out how to post at Blogging Baby, because every post needs a picture and for the life of me I couldn’t get the hang of posting pictures, mostly because every single time someone would start to talk me through it, one of the kids would cry or vomit or run a fever.
On top of that, the idea of getting PAID to write gave me terrible writer’s block; I would lay awake at night thinking WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING? which wasn’t really conducive to peaceful resting. I would wake up in the morning already feeling like I was behind, and would juggle checking my e-mail and making the boys’ lunches and defrosting pancakes for breakfast. I wound up yelling almost every single morning.
I would come home and scramble around to get things done but I would never get to the laundry or the dishes, and then I would have to load the dishwasher after school, while the kids raced around the house and I yelled some more. And eventually someone would come and say, “I don’t have any sweatpants/underwear/black socks to wear tomorrow. Did you do laundry?”
Christa called one night last week, and Wade answered the phone. She said something about my new writing jobs, and he said, “Yes and maybe someday she will make more than ten dollars for five hours of work.” Christa thought that was so funny, but I had to tell her that yes, that’s about right just now. But I couldn’t really talk because I had to start the laundry.
I knew that eventually the kids would be healthy and the weather would warm up and I would figure out how to upload a damn picture and everything would level out, if I could just get through this little window. But then Charlie started acting up at school, and it was one more thing I had to deal with.
Charlie is an easy kid; he wants his blanket, a little chocolate milk, and someone to snuggle with him. When he misbehaves, it is often specifically a bid for attention. Usually, he doesn’t have to resort to this, because he gets lots of snuggles and stories and love. But recently, I was so busy scrambling to get everything else done that I was cutting corners on spending time with the boys, and while this doesn’t really phase Henry, it was totally throwing Charlie. And me.
My first strategy was to go with the reward-and-punishment option, because it seemed easy. But it’s hard for me to keep track of who has how many pluses and minuses, and how many pluses get you a reward and what the penalty is for so many minuses, and then I realized that I was punishing him AGAIN for getting into trouble at school, which seemed silly because his teacher had already imposed a consequence for THAT behavior, and frankly I was too tired and stressed to be The Enforcer all the time when what I really wanted was for Charlie to climb in my lap with his chocolate milk and his binkie while Henry told us a long complicated story about superheroes saving the planet.
When I say I’m giving up multitasking what I mean is that I am going to organize my time better, and not try to do everything all at once all day long. I’m not opening my computer until after carpool; I’m not going to check my e-mail in the two hours before dinner. I’m going to do all my writing while the kids are at school, and when I’m writing I will JUST do that, instead of leaping up halfway through a post to start some laundry or sweep the kitchen. I’m going to take time time in the morning specifically to deal with the housework–load the dishes, start the laundry, sweep the floor.
Yesterday morning, I sat with Henry while he ate. I folded laundry, at the kitchen table, while Charlie ate. I talked to both of them, about their day and the weather and their breakfast. No one cried or yelled, and we were on time. I ran errands after carpool, from a list I had made. I came home and wrote for a while; I stopped after lunch and picked up the house. When the boys came home, I sat with them while they played, and then we watched Dragon Tales together. Charlie got his chocolate milk and his blankie and snuggled in my lap.
Charlie did not get into trouble at school yesterday. It seems too easy to say that he had a better day because I talked to him at breakfast, but I think that may be the answer. So I’m giving up multitasking, in favor of doing everything better. I’m going to do all the same things, just one thing at a time.
Today is Ash Wednesday, so Charlie went to church this morning to get ashes. Of course, he’s never done this before, because I’m a neglectful parent and also not Catholic (any more), and last night as I was tucking him in, he said to me, “Mama, I don’t want to go to church.” Why not? I asked. “Because I’m SCARED,” he said. Hmmm, I said, what are you scared of?
“THE ASHES!” he said.
Of course.
I was telling Jen about that today, and she said, “They’re not PEOPLE ashes, are they?” I said, no, of course not, they’re the palms from Palm Sunday, and she said, “Oh, phew.” And then I started to wonder where CHARLIE thought the ashes came from.
Hmmm.
Wade and I went to a funeral yesterday, and then out for lunch, and while we were waiting for our barbecue, Wade said, “I wouldn’t choose to have a religious service for my memorial, but I can see how it would be comforting for people. And really, the memorial is for everyone else, not the person who has died.” He thought some more and then said, “You can do whatever you want when I die, just don’t have the coffin there.”
“Oh no,” I said, “I’m cremating you.”
“Good,” he said.
I’ve decided that for Lent this year, I’m going to give up multitasking. I’m going to do ONE thing at a time, as much as I can: read or write or be with my kids. Because all sorts of things–Charlie’s fear of the ashes, my friend’s father’s death–have been making me think about what I might be missing while I’m doing three other things.
For forty days, I am going to wait until after carpool to check my e-mail, turn my computer off when the kids come home, keep the kitchen table clear of all my various projects so we can eat without chaos. I’m going to count time in smaller pieces, in half hours instead of in huge blocks of work time, and do one thing at a time.
I’m tired of feeling like I’m missing half of my day doing things I can’t remember later. I don’t think it’s the things I’m doing, I think it’s the way I’m doing them–I do too many things all at once. And while this is sometimes inevitable (right now I am writing this while the laundry goes, for example) I think I can pare down and pay more attention to what I’m doing.
For forty days, at least.
Guess what I did yesterday! Guess!
I spent the day in bed. With stomach flu. Yes, really!
Today I am spraying everything in my path with Lysol, including the kids. No, not really, but I have practically bathed them in Purell. Because what the hell?
Seriously.
In the hours that I wasn’t prostrated with flu, I read Babyproofing Your Marriage, by Stacie Cockrell, Cathy O’Neill, and Julia Stone. I didn’t unlike it, but I was having a hard time putting my finger on what it was that wasn’t ringing true to me. Until I got sick.
Subtitled “How to Laugh More, Argue Less, and Communicate Better as Your Family Grows,” Babyproofing Your Marriage is the “warts-and-all truth about how having children can affect your relationship.” In many places, the authors–all mothers themselves–are dead on. They talk, for example, about the tendency to keep score once we become parents, to note every time we take out the trash or get up in the night with a sick kid, and to remind our significant other just HOW DAMN MUCH we’re doing around here (implying that HE isn’t doing much at all). According to the authors, women typically feel like we are shouldering the majority of the burden in terms of caring for the children. Men, on the other hand, don’t understand why we don’t thank them when they pitch in.
I hate to admit it, but I think they’re right.
But still, as I was reading I kept wondering why I wasn’t wholeheartedly agreeing with their premise: that better communication is key to a successful marriage. I absolutely DO believe that, but something was missing.
Then I got sick.
I woke Wade up yesterday morning by saying, “You have to get up with the kids. I have the flu.” He said, “Okay, you sleep,” and then he jumped right in. I have no idea what they did all day; never once did he come to ask for directions or help. I finally arose from my sickbed at dinner time, as Wade was cheerfully making spaghetti sauce FROM SCRATCH and talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with the boys. He had not only survived the day but had a great time with his kids.
And then it hit me: the authors of Babyproofing Your Marriage don’t really think men are able do that. Despite the fact that their book is about learning to communicate better, they advocate a “training weekend” for husbands, to show them just how hard your job is. They describe the “training weekend” as a “48-hour Navy SEALS-type experience for Dads. Mom takes off and Dad is left, unassisted, to man the kid and house ropes for the weekend. If done correctly, (i.e., Dad has absolutely no backup) a reinvigorated Mom is likely to return to an enormously appreciative and surprisingly helpful husband, and newly confident Dad.”
I have a problem with this. I don’t think that abandoning your husband with the kids for a weekend is the first step to better communication in your marriage. I think, in fact, that it’s just the opposite: it’s a good way to foster resentment, or quite possibly to give your husband MORE ammunition to think that you’re not doing a very good job. Because for the most part, I imagine that men WILL be able to get through the weekend without losing or maiming one of the children. Sure, the house may be a pit and the kids may have eaten take-out for two days, but still.
He will end up convinced that your job is a piece of cake.
This morning, while I was making lunches for the kids and digging around in my wallet for milk money, Wade ate his cereal and logged on to the computer to check his schedule. “I wonder if I need to wear a tie today,” he said. And I started to think about how unfair it is to expect anyone to be able to step into a job on a moment’s notice, no matter what the job is.
In couples where one parent works and the other stays home, there will always be an unbalance of information about the kids. My full-time job is to know how much milk costs at each child’s school (twenty five cents for Henry, thirty five for Charlie), when class pictures are (Charlie’s is tomorrow), and what everyone eats for lunch (Henry has two peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches, cut into four triangles and packed in a plastic box every day). Wade doesn’t know any of that, not because he doesn’t care but because he’s busy with his own full-time job. If he calls in sick, I can’t step in and do what he does; why should I just expect him to be able to do the same here? Why do I need for him to do things EXACTLY like I would?
Answer: I don’t.
I also made a little face of disagreement about the “training weekend” specification that the Dad have NO HELP AT ALL. My friend Christa’s husband is away for the long weekend and her girls are out of school, so she had a babysitter two afternoons. She also had her housekeeper on Friday. Why not? Why SHOULDN’T a parent who is home alone for more than two days have help? To say that Dad has to do it on his own implies that MOM should do the same. And sister, let me tell you, that ain’t going to happen around here.
I think my underlying discontent with this book is that it relies too heavily on a kind of double standard about men and women. The authors claim that men are not as emotionally attached to their infants, for example, as women are, and that women are biologically programmed to worry about every little thing while men just take care of problems. I don’t buy this; my experience has been that men are just as attached to their babies as women, and that women are SOCIALLY programmed to over think and over worry.
I think that the authors of Babyproofing Your Marriage make some interesting and important points about communication issues that come with being parents, and I think that most of us will find something to relate to in this book. But I want you to question their underlying assumptions about men and women and the way we naturally fall into gendered roles when we bring the baby home. Because I just don’t think it’s true.
This review is part of the BlogHer Virtual Book Tour; you can find links to more reviews here, in the comments.
