Showing posts with label towels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label towels. Show all posts

18 October 2008

Is This Feminism?

I have described a slight shift that I've had in my thinking of late about male and female roles. After hardly blogging for a while, being rudely awaken at 6 am on a Saturday morning and now being unable to go back to sleep has me feeling a bit thoughtful, and edgy.
The roles that I took on as a homemaker, wife and mother were things that I enjoyed. The duties that I carried out on a daily basis were important to me, not because someone said I had to do them, but because it was my heart's desire to make a nice home for my family. However, none of this negates the fact that it takes a whole family living in a home to work together to make it all run smoothly.
This morning, before work my husband woke me up and asked me if I knew where there were any clean towels in the house. I started running through all of the things in my mind that I knew we had washed over the last several days and my mind eventually made it to the towel hamper. Sure enough, I had washed a load of towels last night, but they never made it to the dryer. He starts to mumble under his breath while walking in and out of our bedroom throwing lights on in both bathrooms about how our daughter should have gotten the towels washed. While it is a job I ask the girls to do to help around the house, he was home with them yesterday all day long while I was out running errands such as picking up medicine for my son who spent the previous night in the ER with a severe asthma attack and grocery shopping. He was home with the girls all day. They watched movies together, the girls took walks around the neighborhood, painted, did some drawing, read books, etc. I got home and both sinks were full of dishes, and of course nobody thought to do the things necessary to keep the household running smoothly. Did Dad remind them? No. Did he wake up the daughter who is responsible for the towels to ask her if there were any clean? No.
As the complaining and grumbling went on, I asked him if he was trying to pick a fight. Seems just two days ago when I got home from driving for 3 days, there wasn't a clean towel in the house. I mean it - not one hand towel, washcloth, or any of the 30 large towels, including every beach towel that we own in the entire house. Thankfully we had all taken showers in the hotel that morning, and I had the time to wash a load of towels before we would need them again.
Did the grouchy towel-less husband move the towels from the washer to the dryer this morning in an effort to assist with the household needs? No. I could possibly conjure up some sympathy that he had to drip-dry after his shower if I worked really hard at it but I don't have the energy. I am exhausted from this life. I don't know how to engage a partnership for these duties, but I know that I am wearing out. I am tired. I think it's my turn to have a wife. I want somebody to take care of everything and a job that I clock in and out of for 8 hours a day. Does that make me a feminist? I don't know - but it is what it is.