Things Fall Apart

As you may know, I start training for my new job this week. My friend Carla asked how I am going to manage the house and family while I work. 

"My sister-in-law has a schedule of who makes dinner every night for her family," Carla said. "Maybe you should try that."

"I could try that," I said. I thought about it for a few days. I thought about me standing in front of my family with a sign up chart, giving them a lecture on how now that I am going to work things are going to change and I how I used to do all of these invisible, unseen things that made our lives work and now the magic from behind the stage is going to be gone and everyone is going to need to help.

Then I imagined the eye rolls, the "I don't know how to make dinner" and "I'll make ramen when it's my day" and "I won't eat dinner" and so forth.

Screw it. I am going to let things fall apart.

"Where is my track uniform?" I imagine Claire Adele asking next week.

"Did you wash it?" I'll ask as I dash off to hop on the bus to go to class.

"What's for dinner?" Jack will ask.

"You tell me," I'll say.

"Where's my lunch?" the Boy will ask.

"Where is it?" I'll ask back.

It is not like my kids are toddlers. If we were living one hundred years ago, the girl would be off at work as a seamstress and the Boy would be up every morning at dawn taking care of the cows. Running the family farm or whatever would be the family business, so working and being a mom would be interchangeable. Feeding the Boy would be feeding the unpaid help. The girl would be of earning money to help the family. 

That is not how my kids were raised or how our family operates. We are all in for a change, and change that I am not going to manage. I'll take care of myself getting to and from work and what I need to do there. The other three people in my family can help figure out how we can take care of each other without me being in the center.