My sister and I inhabited our landscape completely and intimately. We explored it, smelled it, tasted it, dug in it, grew in it. I can still call to mind, in microscopic detail, every square foot of that yard. It was our ecosystem, our habitat.
The first inkling I had that there was anything imperfect about our Eden must have been around age eight. I had a friend whose house was always immaculate and whose lawn was always trimmed. One day, I presented her mother with a dandelion bouquet, picked from the strip of earth that ran between the driveway and the house. “Weeds,” she said, and tossed them out. I knew then that something about me, my family, and our yard was not right.
There was constant tension between my parents and our neighbors, who did not appreciate dandelions either, or our maple trees, which shaded their grass and littered their yard with leaves and seedlings. I doubt they read my father's books, but if they did, I wonder what they made of his poem about “The Dandelion Killers,” which framed green versus yellow as a clash of values, with ours as the just cause. Dad could spin any act of negligence as a political statement. People who saved money and paid bills on time did so because they were materialistic and greedy. People who voted in elections and served in civic positions were complicit in a corrupt system. People who weeded their lawns were repressed and conforming. I wanted to enjoy the moral high ground, but I secretly worried we were not on the right side of the war.
I grew up, and moved 2,500 miles away to the same house and yard. I was three months pregnant with our first child when we rented the two-bedroom bottom half of an old, rambling foursquare that had been converted to upstairs/downstairs apartments. I gave birth in our bedroom there.
“Is that right? I was born here, too,” our landlord said thoughtfully, standing with us on the wide front porch the following spring, having stopped by to fetch something out of the attic. We got a call from the property manager that week. The owner wanted us to have the house. Ours would be the second family to own it in a century. Were we interested? With no savings and scant credit, we were years from being homeowners. Yes, we said anyway. With a small down payment from my widowed father-in-law, and ridiculously kind terms from the seller, it was ours. Or, at least, the mortgage was.
Like my childhood home, our house was on a large corner lot, which meant the portion of yard exposed to public view was double. It is too hot in Arkansas for either the large maples or bluegrass of my northern childhood, but crabgrass thrived and grew high under our laissez-faire regime, and though I know for certain there were none when we moved in, we had dandelions. A few more every spring. I cooed over every one that was proudly handed to me, strangled in a little fist. When they turned white and star-tipped, the boys blew wishes all over the neighborhood, all over our neighbors' uniformly green lawns. They dug holes and piled rocks and sometimes when I turned into our driveway, I worried that I was still not on the side of the righteous.
Some days I could transcend it and smile at the latest excavation in the front yard, the stick figures drawn in permanent ink on the clapboard siding, new dandelions coming up through the cracks in the sidewalk, all my own wishes sending down roots. At such moments, I felt loving toward the threadbare couch and warped floorboards, not minding that things were shabby and worn if they were comfy and sunlit. Other days I'd wake up thinking we should just sell the place and move. Then I'd realize I would still have to clean it, and weep.
One night I finally got around to replacing the bulbs in the track-lighting fixture above the dining room table, days after the last one had finally gone out. Our oldest son, who was in first grade at the time, and had to do homework on that table, was openly astonished at the difference a little electric light made. “Wow,” he said, without even a trace of sarcasm, “I wonder why it took so long to change the lights.”
“I don't know,” I told him. “I don't know why.” I was still standing on the table, and he looked so small and amazed that I wanted to fall to my knees, hold him to my chest and say I'm sorry, I wanted to be better for you. I thought I might have it together by now, but I don't, and I don't think I will before you figure it out and can see for yourself that other people seem to have the secret to life and we, your parents, don't have a clue.
The problem is not with our intelligence. It's with our kind of intelligence. In Myers-Briggs personality type parlance, Patrick and I are both NFPs, which stands not just for neurotic, flaky, and procrastinating, but also for iNtuitive, Feeling, and Perceptive. In practical terms, it means neither of us has a scrap of common sense. Our predominant functions are developed at the expense of sensory perception, linear thinking, and rational decision making. To illustrate: When a lightbulb goes out in the homes of people at the opposite end of the personality spectrum, they (1) notice right away that it is dark; (2) swiftly and correctly deduce the cause of being in the dark; (3) go immediately to the closet where a supply of spare bulbs is kept; (4) change the bulb, properly disposing of the old one; and (5) make a note to replace the spare bulb the next time they are at the hardware store getting lawn supplies. We try not to associate with such people, except that it appears our firstborn is one of them. We are his cross to bear.
With us, a nonemergency malfunction can go unresolved indefinitely. Being in the dark falls under “nonemergency.” Other nonemergencies include anything growing or not growing outside; anything a spare bathroom can't compensate for; and strange noises coming from anything with moving parts as long as the parts are still working and not yet on fire, at which point we will most likely notice the problem and make a determination as to whether the object in question is essential and constitutes an emergency. There are very few situations that are automatically labeled urgent. A laundry equipment malfunction is one of them.
A few years ago, we got into a conversation with a childless couple who had just visited the local warehouse club for the first time. They were having a chuckle over the giant containers. “It would take us a
year
to use that much laundry detergent!” they snorted.
“Yeah. We go through one of those a month,” I said. In a family of five, two loads a day is the minimum it takes to keep dirty clothes from backing up and overflowing into the hallways. Just changing socks and underwear is a quarter of a load.
One Saturday afternoon our washing machine got through agitating a load of clothes, and then, drunk on power, decided to agitate
me
by refusing to drain. I twiddled the dial and pulled the knob and wiggled the basket, and then I told Patrick the situation.
“Holy shit,” he said, before retreating to his office.
I gave him a few minutes, then followed him back there.
“I think it's clogged,” I offered.
“Could be,” he nodded, avoiding eye contact.
I felt he could use a prompt, so I asked, “What needs to happen for us to find out?”
“Let me think about that.”
“Could you think about it
quickly
?” This elicited an injured look. I ignored it. It was no time for kid gloves, and I've poked through all the fingers on mine anyhow. My husband is a man of innumerable charms and gifts, but being quickly roused to action is not one of them. “Let me think about that” is usually a euphemism for “Let me
not
think about that for as long as it can possibly be put off.”
It's bad enough we are two NFPs, but he has to go and complicate it by being an introvert. That means his brain has four stomachs. All information has to be chewed twice before he can digest it. I am an extrovert. I think fast and out loud. I process verbally. My opinions develop on the scene, and are revised constantly. I'm like the twenty-four-hour news cycle, complete with screen crawl. Becoming educated about these differences has helped us navigate through many a minefield of potential misunderstanding. He has learned that the words “talk” and “later” uttered in the same sentence will cause me to chew my own leg off. I have learned that the deer-in-the-headlights stare I get in response to “Hey, let's . . .” is not necessarily an out-of-hand rejection. Sometimes, if I stand back and give him a little air, he will come around on his own. Occasionally, I have to bring out the smelling salts.
In this instance, time was not on our side. The laundry clock was ticking. Towels were being used, clothes worn. I needed a specific commitment. I extracted a promise of “first thing in the morning.” Morning came, and with it, low groans and complaints of a bad back. Toward lunchtime, I was directed to clear off the top of the appliances and bail out the wash water so he could examine the patient. It was a transparent stalling maneuver, but I prepped as told.
“It's ready for you,” I announced, thirty minutes later. He pointed to a sandwich on his desk.
“I have to eat lunch,” he said, resolutely, as if the union was behind him. He lifted a potato chip to his mouth, took a bite from it, chewed it one hundred times, put it down, lifted the sandwich to his mouth, took a bite from it, chewed it one hundred times, put it down, and reached for the rest of the first chip. He did all of this in slow motion, like it was his last meal. If I kept watching, it would be, so I returned to the operating theater and pulled the washer out from the wall. I sized up the hose and pipe attachments in back. How hard could this be? I Googled “washing machine clogged drain,” and scrolled through a bunch of do-it-yourself forums. Piece of cake. By the time Patrick moseyed into the kitchen for cookies, I was wedged between the wall and washer, trying to loosen a hose connector by hand.
“Are you sure you don't want me to do that?” he offered, peering down over the control panel.
“Not on your life,” I grunted. By my reckoning, I was sitting on a gold mine of spousal guilt. Having missed his moment to save the day, Patrick would be driven to overcompensate in other matters of household maintenance. His masculine pride was on the line.
Apparently not. “I find this incredibly sexy, you know,” he said, handing me a wrench and leering, as I squatted in the corner with my skirt hitched up and rubber gloves on. My plan was backfiring. “Never learn to type,” my feminist mother warned me in junior high. “Or someone will always expect you to.” She'd have disowned me for the stunt I pulled next, but I could see that my plunge into D-I-Y was setting a precedent from which there was no return. If I fixed the washer, what stood between me and the lawn mower? Me and the plumbing snake? Me and the engine oil filter? It's not that I believe labor should be divided on the basis of genderâI was raised Free to Be . . . You and Me. But I don't believe doubling my labor on the basis of ability either.
“Here,” I said, handing over the wrench. “I can't unscrew the hose. It's too hard for me.” Patrick looked skeptical. I batted my eyelashes. Then pouted. “
You
should be doing this anyway.”
“Why?” he asked. “Don't you feel proud of yourself tackling this? Doesn't it make you feel capable? Like I feel when you leave me alone to take care of the kids for the day?” He had a point there. But I wasn't about to give it to him. For us, and for every couple I know with young children, division of household labor and parental involvement is an ongoing, perpetually unresolved negotiation, fraught with mistrust and suspicion. It's hard because raising a family is hard work, more work than any two people without a full domestic staff or an endless supply of selfless relatives can accomplish without yelling at each other sometimes. Each party feels he or she is getting screwed somehow, and not in a way that feels good. Throw in sleep deprivation, the elimination of a salary, and responsibility for handling body waste that is not your own, and every day that we don't eat our young is a kind of miracle.
It was my choice to stay at home with our children during the early years, and I wouldn't have traded it for whatever middle-income wage I could have earned at the time. Notwithstanding real financial sacrifice, I was lucky to have the choice, and I knew it. But choosing to be at home didn't waive my right to resent the hell out of it sometimes, especially when Patrick came home from his day at the office with the feeling that he was entitled to relax. His working hours were clearly delineated, whereas I was on call 24/7. On the other hand, it wasn't as if I was tied to a desk all day, every day. I could take my work to the park. My clients were the people I loved most in the world, even if they couldn't wipe their own noses. My colleagues were my best girlfriends. There were no common denominators to form the basis of an objective comparison between our workloads, just vague jealousies that erupted periodically into open recriminations.
“When do I get a weekend off?” I'd mutter, flinging back the sheets to get up on a Sunday morning and make breakfast, while Patrick snoozed, oblivious to hungry kids clamoring on my side of the bed.
“You got to hang out with your friends today,” he'd observe, surveying dirty teacups on the coffee table and post-playgroup wreckage strewn over the floors.
“I wouldn't call it hanging out,” I'd say, indignantly. “Would you say you were hanging out with your co-workers all day?” The analogy was a false one, however. I did get to hang out with the friends my children made me, one of the chief benefits of my vocation. But it was hardly leisure time, either. Hosting playgroup was like having a tea party, but one in which two or three chimpanzees accompanied each guest. Going out for any activity was a major operation. I learned to weigh the schlep factor against the merit of being at any given destination. More often than not, that calculation came out to “Nah.”
Even a day at the beach is no day at the beach. About once a year, a girlfriend and I take our six kids on a day trip to a lake in the country. It takes half the morning just to pack and coordinate, the rest of the morning to get to our destination. We arrive on the sizzling asphalt parking lot at high noon, a cascade of totes, containers, and inflatables spilling out of our vans. Thirty minutes later, we are all still on the asphalt, inflating, sunscreening, and unloading passengers and equipment. The first time we went, I brought not one, but two magazines for my reading pleasure. Just in case I got all the way through the first and was stuck for something to do. Three exhausting hours later, they went back into the van untouched. Idly thumbing through the glossies is not something you can do in between catering, lifesaving, and commanding a vinyl flotilla. We do have fun. But it isn't hanging out.