Tired Mom Diary – Chapter 8 – I’m Not One of Your Projects
Ben and I had a fight on Tuesday.
A real one.
Not about socks.
Not about dishes.
Although, technically, it started with a piece of paper.
The sick-day instructions.
He found them in the drawer.
“You kept this?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“In case Nora gets sick again.”
“She’s six. She’s going to get sick again.”
“Exactly.”
He stared at me.
I stared back.
Marriage is beautiful.
“Do you really think I need instructions to look after my own daughter?”
“No.”
“Then why did you write them?”
“To make things easier.”
“For who?”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Nothing useful came out.
A rare event.
“I was trying to help.”
“I know. But you do this with everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
He started counting on his fingers.
“The dishwasher. Her clothes. The school lunches. The way I pack the car.”
“You put the cooler on top of the bread.”
“Once.”
“The bread was flat.”
“It was still bread.”
“It was a tortilla.”
He almost laughed.
I almost did too.
Neither of us wanted to be first.
“You know what the problem is?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“You don’t want help. You want another you.”
That one landed.
I hated it immediately.
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is asking me to do something and then standing behind me fixing it.”
“I don’t stand behind you.”
He looked at me.
“Okay. You stand beside me.”
I crossed my arms.
He crossed his.
We looked like two people waiting for an elevator that wasn’t coming.
“I’m tired, Ben.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You have no idea how many things I’m thinking about all the time.”
“Then stop doing all of them.”
I laughed.
Not nicely.
“Right. I’ll just stop. Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you don’t trust anyone else to do them.”
“I trust you.”
“Until I do it differently.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong.
Unfortunately, I could remember the dishwasher.
And the car.
And the narwhal.
Especially the narwhal.
That stupid, magnificent narwhal.
We didn’t speak for twenty minutes.
Not because we were giving each other the silent treatment.
Because Nora was watching cartoons in the next room, and neither of us wanted to explain why Mom and Dad were arguing about bread.
Eventually, Ben sat beside me.
“Look. I don’t want to fight about this every week.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then let’s split things properly.”
“We already split things.”
“We split the work. You still manage all of it.”
I looked at him.
He wasn’t wrong.
I wished he’d been wrong.
It would have made the conversation much easier.
So we made a deal.
Ben takes school.
All of it.
Emails. Forms. Library books. Theme days. Permission slips.
He also takes the cars.
And his family.
Birthdays. Christmas presents. The whole thing.
I keep groceries, meals, and my family.
No reminders.
No checking.
No helpful little suggestions.
He said that last part while looking directly at me.
Rude.
NEW FAMILY MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE
BEN:
School.
Cars.
His mother.
ME:
Groceries.
Meals.
My mother.
SHARED:
Nora.
The house.
Arguments about what shared means.
On Thursday, the school sent an email.
REMINDER: PICTURE RETAKE DAY TOMORROW!
I read it.
Then I remembered.
School was Ben’s.
I put my phone down.
Picked it up.
Put it down.
Opened the email again.
Nora’s hair needed washing.
Her nice sweater was in the laundry.
She’d lost the little clips that keep her bangs out of her eyes.
I knew all of this.
Ben was beside me on the couch.
Watching hockey.
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He went back to the game.
I lasted four minutes.
“Did you see the email?”
“Yep.”
“About pictures?”
“Yep.”
“Does she have something to wear?”
“Yep.”
I waited.
He didn’t elaborate.
It was deeply irritating.
Friday morning, Nora came downstairs.
Hair washed.
Nice sweater.
Two little clips holding back her bangs.
Ben had found them.
I didn’t ask where.
That was my contribution.
He handed me coffee.
“See? I can do school.”
“I never said you couldn’t.”
He raised an eyebrow.
I drank my coffee.
It tasted like defeat.
And vanilla creamer.
Saturday morning, I opened our shared calendar.
Not to check.
Just to look.
There was a dentist appointment next month.
A school concert in December.
A reminder about winter tires.
All entered by Ben.
I closed it.
Then opened it again.
Just to make sure.
Apparently, giving up control is easy.
You just have to stop touching things.
I lasted eleven seconds.