A few years ago Dan left his job and stayed home with the kids for five months so I could finish college. We had 8 kids at home. Five of them had some kind of special needs, two severely handicapped, intensive needs. They attended five different schools in two different towns. I was taking 25 credits, at two different colleges, to graduate on time (in the top fifteen percent, thank you very much) from a top private college; our house was on the market; and we were fixing to move back to Alaska that June.
To top it off, we were in the middle of two different trials. One for three kids we’d had for two years and we were preparing for them to leave our home and return to their birth parents and the other with a birth mom who’d been out of the picture two years and suddenly decided she wanted to parent…our child.
Can you say all…stressed… out?
So…Dan quit his job and took on the role of housewife while I was gone sometimes morning till night. In between running kids to at least ten appointments per week as well as school and sports, he kept house and cooked all the meals.
Now, for the previous twelve years or so I had been an at home mom. I’d not worked substantially or earned any real money. I had worked…mind you…at home raising many kids but as for the money maker, Dan had always filled that role nicely. So now I’m basically gone from the picture and he’s at home, caretaking, tending to all my previous duties.
And what pissed me off was this: He did it better than me.
Now lets be honest here…we women have our men fooled. We shuffle the kids off to school; lounge around in our pajamas, phone propped on one shoulder gabbing with a friend while we fold laundry or dry dishes. We sit between chores, break whenever we want to, take a day off to grocery shop or lunch with a friend. There’s no real pressure in our jobs…we are our own boss.
But for years…don’t deny it ladies…we’ve made out that it is the most physically rigorous job on earth, requiring intense physical assertion, grueling and backbreaking labor. We give the image of a slave girl in rags, on her knees, scrubbing behind the toilet with a toothbrush…when in reality we are donning an Ipod, yapping on the phone, and using a Magic Mop to reach those difficult places while standing in our pink fuzzy slippers. Not exactly San Quentin.
So when Dan took on my duties with such success, I was to say the least, miffed. All those years I’d worked to earn his respect and suddenly my secret was out. My job was easy. Not only easy, but he did it so well! Never was there a pile of laundry, not a dish in the sink or a crumb on the floor. Kids never missed appointments, went to school without their lunch or wore mismatched socks. He was the frickin’ Girl Scout cookie mom for gosh sakes! Perfect.
But here’s the hitch. Anyone…I mean anyone…can do something for six months. Six months is a cakewalk. I could stand on my head for six months. You hear someone worked a meticulous assembly line for six months you think…eh, no big deal. You hear they did the same job for thirty years, you wonder how they didn’t go postal.
It’s the monotony of a job…any job… that drives a person insane. It’s not sorting socks that makes a person crazy…it’s sorting them eight thousand times. That’s the mind numbing killer.
I’m proud of Dan for stepping up to the plate and being a better mom than I…for those few months. He was truly our hero and in the process taught our children that a man’s role is not set in stone and a good dad knows how to support his wife in more ways than one.
But let him do it for the next twenty years and see how he holds up. My guess is I’d find him quivering in the corner, surrounded by mismatched socks and clutching a box of Girl Scout cookies in his Palmolive soft hands.
