Exposed
Today was quite a day. It started with about 5 hours at church doing video production. That was followed up by a brief respite, if it can be called that, of Lions football before Mason got up from his nap. When he got up the little man and I went out and joined the Sunday afternoon madness at the grocery store.
Our path around the store, if it could be charted out on a map, would probably be comical. You see Shannon does all of the grocery shopping, so I have no idea where anything is, and the signs they hang at the ends of each of the aisles can be less than helpful. Retrospectively I realize the cooking spray would be in the baking aisle, but in the moment I went up and down 4 aisles, two of which I had already been in, in order to find it. (And that’s only one example.)
Back from the grocery store my tasks fell to putting the groceries away, finding room in the fridge for everything (so doing a bit of cleaning there) and cooking dinner ready for Mason, Shannon and I. Mason feeds himself most things but not after 6:30. After 6:30 he decides we’ve addressed his dinner needs far too late for his liking and he’s not eating. So then it’s 1/2 an hour of coercing him into eating most of a grilled cheese sandwich. (Those of you have never experienced issues getting your kid to eat food put in front of him or her are more blessed than you know.)
After I inhaled my dinner it was time to clean everything up, and give Mason his bath. Thankfully bath time is a favorite of his so it’s easy to make this happen. After he went to bed pretty much everything was done for the evening. Just a bit of vacuuming and some laundry to fold.
I’m not sharing this to impress you with how much I did around the house. And I’m definitely not sharing it to be mocked for my generally goofy inability to effectively do some of these things. I’m sharing to let you know that I’ve been exposed, exposed as immensely selfish.
I say this because normally what I just described would be Shannon’s average day. Sure I’d pitch in here or there, maybe helping get Mason to eat his dinner, or doing the dishes, but generally speaking she takes the bulk of these duties and handles them with ease and grace and I…hopefully subconsciously…just expect that they be done.
I don’t say thank you enough, I don’t look for ways I can help out enough and I certainly don’t think about how she probably doesn’t enjoy doing many of those things much the same way I don’t enjoy doing them. Much like me, she’d probably rather be watching football too…well, not that at all, but whatever her desired activity is over cooking and cleaning. Today I did all those things because they have to be done and if I don’t do them Shannon will try when she is supposed to be in bed. In the future my intention is to step in and help do them more often so that she doesn’t have to.
So my hat is off to single parents and to parents who take the primary responsibility for caring for the household needs. But most especially my hat is off to Shannon for everything she has done for the past four years of our marriage and the past two years as a mother. Thanks, honey, so much, and I love you.
