circles nom what my doing here? 060327 ... tender_square in the middle of the night she woke from a dream where she had been serving soup to women as they sat in a hot spring. when the soup ran out, the husband of one of the women arrived at the edge of the pool with the ingredients needed, behaving as if the soup was easy to make, that the ingredients could be thrown into the pot whole—anyone could do it. she was annoyed by this man and his attitude, couldn’t return to sleep afterwards because she kept arguing with unconscious parts of herself: “if he thinks it’s so damn easy, why isn’t he taking on the load more often?” she replayed the events of the day in her head, the little accumulated duties required for running a household that she took care of, not only for herself, but for her husband. the inequality of work was wearing on her. she had asked him for his help with small tasks, and each time she did, he made a sour face and said nothing, acted like he was put out with what she requested. “the problem with being capable,” her mother warned her, “is that no one thinks you need help.” she was a doer. she was her mother’s daughter. she asked herself how much of this arrangement was her fault. she was particular, she had a certain way that she liked things done, and she didn’t try to impose that on him, which was how the problem likely began. for instance, she was careful about her clothes because they were cheap, there were many pieces she didn’t dry though she washed them on a regular cycle. it was too complicated to tell him what articles to pull from the washer, so she insisted on doing the laundry herself. the deal was, he folded and put away his own clothes and she tended to hers. but there were other issues, like when she tried to delegate some of her responsibilities to him, he’d ask her an inordinate number of questions, and rather than it taking work off of her plate, it added to it. she could do the task faster herself, which is why she took over the grocery orders once more; he didn’t know the brands they used. what took her 10 minutes to assemble took him triple the time with her advice all the while. so their compromise was that he would put in the skeleton order for the week ahead, and she would drill him with questions on sundays: “what toiletries do you need? what snacks do you want? what are we going to have for dinner this week?” he rarely added what he required to their list. and he was not one for noticing what needed to be done around the house. the garbage would be full and he wouldn’t take the initiative to take it out (or he’d say it was too heavy for him to lift because of his past issues with hernias), the kitchen would have paper bags filled with recycling that he wouldn’t take to the bin. it was considered a win if he cleaned out his empty containers to add with the others. he remarked recently to her, “i don’t know what it is that you do around the house,” because so much of the little things she did were invisible and seamless. he didn’t notice what she did because her work is what made their life possible. she was constantly inventorying, tidying, organizing. “our bedroom is really dusty,” he remarked casually a few days prior. “i think that’s why my allergies are so bad.” “you know where the broom and dust pan are,” she said. he looked at her blankly. “they’re in the basement, under the shelf where the laundry detergent is kept.” her sunday came and went as follows: in the morning, after he rose from bed, she unloaded the dishwasher and loaded what few dishes had accumulated after the cycle began. there were pots and pans from dinners a few nights earlier sitting on the countertop that still needed to be hand washed. following her lunch and yoga, she started a load of laundry and she washed the pots and pans. she took two bags of recycling outside in the snow. she emptied the kitchen garbage. he watched her while he prepared a snack in the kitchen. “can you put in a new bag?” she asked. she had to ask him twice, he didn’t hear her the first time. when she stepped back inside the house he said, “i just used the last garbage bag—should i add more to the grocery list?” she thought for a moment. “no, i have extra in the basement, i’ll get them.” downstairs, she moved the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, pulled out and hung the pieces that were important to her. after she returned upstairs with the garbage bags, she combed through her dessert recipes. she was going to be baking later that week, three different batches of cookies, to give to their new neighbors in windsor. they had welcomed her and her husband to the neighborhood with a thoughtful card and a bottle of wine at christmas and her mom had been reporting that their driveway and sidewalk were often shoveled by their neighbors when they weren’t around. another task she was taking on to build relationships for the both of them, that she would do alone. she began making their grocery list, posing the questions she did to him each week. she knew the ingredients for the dishes they made from memory, and she checked what they had in their pantry and fridge to ensure she wasn’t buying something they already had. “could i get you to pack up the food for windsor?” she asked him. every time they crossed the border, she was responsible for packing her personal effects she needed, any supplies they were bringing to the house or gifts for family and friends, and the ingredients they used to make breakfast and lunches, and for the snacks they preferred each day. her husband shot her a look of dismay. “i will make a list for you,” she said. “that way we don’t forget anything.” they started making dinner together, lentil shepherd’s pie. she filled the big pot with water for the potatoes, and a smaller pot with lentils and the appropriate liquid to cook them. she diced the onion, the garlic, the carrots, while her husband washed and peeled potatoes at the sink, bringing them over for her to slice (he didn’t know how to use a knife for dicing, even though she showed him how she did it). when she had finished prepping, she left her husband to sauté the veggies and began typing out the list of food items for their trip the following weekend. when the potatoes were finished boiling, she mashed them with a hand mixer. her husband had spread out the lentil mixture in a casserole dish, and she followed by layering the potatoes overtop. when she was finished, he slid the dish into the oven, rinsed off the pots and pans that had been used, as well as the dishes required in the prep, and went back into their bedroom. she stayed behind and loaded the dishwasher, handwashed the cooking containers. it was always this way. by that time, the laundry had finished drying. she brought the hamper upstairs and he was waiting for her by the sofa. she dumped out the contents and he began rifling through the clothes for his items. she sat on the chaise and folded her few shirts, her multiple pairs of underwear; she liked the konmari method of folding her pieces, it was therapeutic and it allowed her to be better able to see what she owned. after he left the room with his pile she called to him, “would you mind bringing the laundry hamper in there with you?” while dinner continued to cook, she returned to her computer to update their grocery order for pickup the following day. she was nearly finished when the oven timer rang. “i am going to be a few minutes,” she said. “could you slice that for me?” she could tell from his silence in the other room that he was not happy to be asked. “it’s easy,” she assured him. “i just use a butter knife to slice it into sections.” she finished the order while he divvied up the pie and scooped it into bowls. “thank you for doing that,” she said. “the grocery order is all set.” they ate dinner and afterwards, he rinsed their dishes and loaded them in to the dishwasher as she packed away the leftovers. they layered their clothing and prepared to go outside and shovel. an inch and a half had fallen, it wasn’t heavy, but he was cautious about lifting, the worry of future hernias a constant in his mind. she shoveled two-thirds of the driveway more than what he managed in the same time. it was always this way. in the middle of the night, she was resentful; she was tired. if she was going to be responsible for all this work, she thought, she’d rather do it for herself and no one else. for so much of their marriage, she felt it was her duty to bear the brunt of these tasks because he financially supported her. had she hampered him from taking care of himself? is this why studies often showed that the quality of a man’s life improved dramatically through marriage while a woman’s often declined? she thought about what the morning would bring. she would drive them across town to the grocery store, because she had been up longer than he had, and therefore more alert, according to him. additional snow was falling and she would have to drive more carefully. she would carry the heaviest bags to the house because of his hernia fears, she would organize the fridge with their purchases while he stood back watching, she would empty the fridge of anything that had spoiled, rinsing the containers for recycling while he made his breakfast. it was always this way. 220124 ... tender_square “it could be that the look you think you’re seeing from him is not dismissal at all,” her therapist suggested. “it could be confusion from being asked to do something that you’ve handled for, say, the past four years.” “that does make sense; he is slow to react to things. it’s very well possible that i am catching him off guard.” “but there’s something else that could be at play; you mentioned the invisible work and him not knowing where the broom was kept, him taking the initiative to sweep the bedroom…i wonder if this sudden annoyance is linked to worry you may have about how he functions without you when you are planning to not be around at some point.” at this, she began to cry. her face scrunched up trying to keep the tears from staining her cheeks, and she gently wiped a folded tissue beneath her lash line. she nodded wordlessly. “it’s just…i keep wishing that i could leave him in a better state than he was in before we came together, and i don’t know if that’s possible.” “has he gone back to therapy?” “no, and it’s not my place to push him to do that.” * he said, “i think we should shovel as soon as we get home,” and she agreed. they already had their gear on, it made sense to do it before eating dinner. she started on the walkway and porch. when he jumped in to help her, she shooed him off: “i got this.” she took her time, using the scraping edge against the stones to lift up as much snow as she could. she didn’t want a packed-down trail that eventually iced over, she wanted as much ground visible as possible. when she finished, she shoveled around the car and at the top of the driveway where the bins were; garbage day was the next morning, and they needed a path to cart them to the street. when she finished, she trudged over to him. “are we done?” he shot her an annoyed look. “what? what’s wrong?” “i didn’t think i’d be having to do the driveway all by myself.” “you didn’t; i did the upper part of it around the car.” “next time, i’ll do the walkway.” in all of her repressed annoyance, maybe she had taken her time with the porch, putting him into a position where he’d have to do more work for a change. he wasn’t impressed. “thank you for all the work you did on the driveway,” she was genuine. as they ate their leftovers, the snow plow traversed their street, knocking their bins over. in her after-dinner guilt, she went outside to right them. she picked up a shovel and cleared the end of the driveway of shoved snow the plow pushed through, dug out the street in front of the mailboxes for her and her neighbors. if that didn’t make things even between them, she didn’t know what would. 220124 what's it to you? who go blather from