I work in an office from our home, and our few employees
gather here as needed for review or coordination. With people coming and going
a sink full of breakfast dishes can’t linger till noon, so they need to be gone
every morning. The work clutter does get to be a pretty big problem, but I like
whisking through the house, clearing loose ends like stranded shoes, and
homework materials which seem to never seem to be put away. Many women I’m sure
are much more meticulous than I, my wife for example, but some days I just have
to clear all the loose and stranded things gathering here and there, and I am
just so satisfied when it is all done. I get even more delight, when I exert
the extra effort to wipe down the mirror, basin and commode in our three baths,
so that everything sparkles. Every once in while I like to light candles here
and there to give the house an added touch of warm ambience.
I have been working from home for the past year and a half.
Circumstances are such that I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do it,
but I have found picking up the ownership share of household chores has brought
me great joy, and something more: serenity. I prepare the evening meal for my
wife and son, fix my wife’s lunch, and often fix breakfast for the boy as well.
His favorite morning meals are blender smoothies with a bagel and melted
cheddar cheese, chocolate chip pancakes, or crepes with ricotta, jam and fresh
fruit. Recently I’ve added a holiday treat, eggs benedict, which is nice on a
random Wednesday morning if you know what I mean.
I spoil my son and my wife has to deal with that on the rare
occasions I am not here to do it. I try
to spoil her a little too. Her lunches consist of leftovers from previous
dinners, or sandwiches and fresh fruit or granola bar. She eats like a bird,
but I try to make the little morsels special for her. We have leftovers two or
three times a week now, part of a menu planned each week before grocery
shopping, but we have a freshly prepared meal four or five times a week. We eat
fish and chicken, beef and pork, but the diet is well balanced with lots of
fresh, crispy-crunchy, bright green vegetables. Mom ruined me for most things
frozen except corn and spinach. Vegetables should not be grey or brown after
cooking. When we do have leftovers I try to only plan that for things the
family really enjoys the second time around.
I have been cooking most of the meals, but it took some time
to learn to manage portion control in a way where everyone was satisfied, and
the extra was only on things that went down well. Still it is not unusual for
me to make one main course for our son, and another for my wife and I. Sometimes
I make an extra side for the wife when I have a taste for spinach which she
dislikes. Even though we have become fairly meticulous about excess, managing
the leftovers got a lot easier when Lexi joined our family. The dog eats
everything. Roughly once a week, we scrape all the remnants, including
vegetables, from the Tupperware in the fridge into a single bowl of gruel,
which forms the basis for the “wet” part of the dog’s diet for the following
week.
For those of you used to the polemical essays I post on
Faith and Magic, many must be wondering now where is he going with this? I
guess the truth is, well, I don’t know. Maybe, nowhere. I just wanted to savor
for a moment the enjoyment I have received in doing these tasks, most
especially doing them for my family. For the first time in either of my kid’s
lives I have been here to see one of my children off in the morning and pick him
up after school at the bus. My wife and I split the homework, but I am deeply
engaged, know the name of all the teachers, maintain the homework log, and know
his grade level in all his classes. I do
World History and Comp and Lit, and especially during the week make sure
everything gets done. Mom does Science. He’s on his own in math. The work is
beyond us both. We split the rest of the classes, often alternating as our
schedules require, even in our “assigned” classes. Most importantly I have been here, at home,
with him. I have heard the stories about what’s going on in school, what boy
did this, and oh my, a teacher was fired. During the summer I was the soccer-dad-chauffer
of sorts, driving our scooter crazy son and his boys here and there several days
a week, sometimes every day of the week. As a result I know the boys pretty
well. This will never be the hangout house my parents wisely wanted our home to
be, but I can carry their quirkiness and remember my own. One never takes off
his hat, even when sleeping. Another wears shorts even when its 10 degrees outside.
These will be joyful memories for me.
I read about all of this, the slavery of housework, in
Simone de Beauvoir’s ground breaking work, The
Second Sex, a book I still consider one of the most important I ever
read. I read most of it during a long
weekend at my cousin’s house in Pennsylvania when I was in my 20’s. I pictured
myself quite a radical in those days (yawn) and my reading material often veered
back and forth between African American history and Feminist theory. The
African American history came easier to me.
Truth be told—it has been lot of years—I think my interest
in feminism may have in part had something to do with a woman I was pursuing at
the time, so maybe my motivation was misplaced. I’m grateful now that that particular woman slipped
my grasp, though I’m sure I didn’t feel it at the time. For a little while I
was working hard to keep up I think, and I poured through a variety of
materials including the Mary Daly book, Gyn/Ecology:
The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Even today there is ominous picture of…
wait for it… a medieval ax [!] on the reprinting covers of Daly’s book. Gyn/Ecology left me with lessons and
ideas on language, etymology, and the nature of patriarchal society that are
still with me today, but Daly’s book felt extreme and isolating. The Second Sex, addressed language and
culturally learned behavior. It was written in 1949, decades before Gyn/ Ecology. Even though it has been 30
years since I read both books, de Beauvoir’s work still feels more generous and challenging. It has been so many
years now, but in imaginary arguments I had in my head, I remember thinking de
Beauvoir’s masterpiece was in some ways an excellent response to Gyn/ Ecology.
The Second Sex
made me think about my mother’s life, and the limit of her choices, and how
those choices were in ways ordained and predetermined by hundreds, no thousands
of years of male-centric human evolution. This is not to say my mother was an
unhappy woman. It is all so much more complex than that.
Both books made me think about religious institutions, the
power they exert, and the distortions in human interaction that resulted. This
was particularly true for the religion I was raised in, Catholicism, which I
have never seen in the same way since. Though all of the mono-theistic
religions, including and especially Judaism and Islam, have much to answer to
in terms of their fear and revulsion of women which in many ways is just hatred
of their own male hierarchal being, recent events have shown the deep
self-hatred at the core of Catholic theology and the ugliness into which it has
metastasized.
It seems abundantly clear that a church built on patriarchal
values has now toppled any sense of morality, particularly and especially in
the area of sexual ethics, be it contraception, abortion or homosexuality, in a
vain attempt to hide the sins of its leaders. A church hierarchy that hides
such heinous crimes has been exposed. Fear of the “other” and of themselves and
who they were caused many to race for the shield of the church only to find
once there that the sanctuary did not quiet their urges. It is most obvious
now, that the Church structure distorted and perhaps perverted them. Tens of
thousands of young victims are the progeny of the senseless evil which grew out
of abundant fear. Other churches have fared no better recently. The entire patriarchal
structure is under assault from the weakness of its own propagandists. Watching
the extremes of the religious and the political during this last election cycle
one is hard pressed not to see the deep fear of women, the absolute desire to
control, which is at the root of much of conservative dogma.
The experience of the two books and many others I read in
that period, including Toni Morisson’s sublime Tar Baby, affect the way I see
my daughter and inspires the fight in me to see that her opportunities know no
limit beyond her aspirations, ambition, and desire to work.
But until these past 18 months or so, when I have been home
to care for my family, I think I all too often lived a life that hewed more
closely to the traditional roles for husband and wife than I’d like to think or
even admit to myself. While both my wife and I worked, the schedule of my committed
time outside the home often meant that my wife carried an unequal burden around
the house. I often felt I acted as and was seen as a father more at Christmas
than almost any other time of the year. I
was just gone too much. These past 18 months, have shown me not only what my
family missed, but what I missed as well. The vacuum cleaner tethered me back
to that part of me I discovered in the Second
Sex and Gyn/ Ecology. I do not
fool myself to call it liberation. I recognize the quality of our earnings and
the circumstances of our experience are unique and that up until now we have
been beyond fortunate. Many will never have this choice and choice is really
what liberation is all about.
But I will say that while I have been home, sometimes not
venturing further than the bus stop for days, something inside me has been
released. This person is truly the
person I want to be, and perhaps wanted to be for a really long time, satisfied
to wash the dishes, take out the trash, walk the dog five times a day, make the
meals, clean the baths, and do my work, and maybe write a little. The vacuum is
tethered to the electrical outlet. Our vacuum is pretty powerful. I just love
when I am done, to empty that container to see what we have captured. For all
intents and purposes our no-shed mutt ought to be bald by now. While the
machine is powerful, it has a short cord, and with no connection-- no power.
Disconnect the plug from the socket and the machine can go places. It just
can’t do anything. That’s how I feel now.
This is dedicated with supreme love to my loving wife, Devi,
who never once complained even when she had every right to, and to my loving
children, who made me carry on even when I didn’t want to. I was untethered for a long time, but now
that I have (re)discovered this power I intend to never let it go. Love to all.
MH
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