Middle Rage

Aimee - Part 14

Aimee

When were a childless couple, I did the laundry, and Jake mowed the lawn. I did the grocery shopping and meal making. He took care of the car, paid the bills, and invested our money. It felt pretty equal. Not entirely equal, but since he made more money... fair? I guess. Like we both brought equal amounts home, in different ways.

When Annabelle was born, the lawn stayed the same. The bills got higher, but the act of paying them? The same. The car's oil and wheel alignment schedule? Same.

For my chores, two loads of laundry a week became three. Sometimes that extra load had to be done immediately when she wet the bed and it was that or let the laundry room smell like an outhouse. Then Annabelle started to eat people food, and so instead of three meals, there were maybe four or five spread throughout the day. Plus somehow, we were always running out of things — diapers, laundry detergent, milk — so one trip to the grocery became two, sometimes even three. The list of things that were running low in the house became a constant low-grade concern, one more app running in the back of my mind.

There was the constant picking up of toys, tossing them back into baskets, putting things away. The kitchen floor, which I had barely noticed when we were childless, was always sticky. It didn't take hours to clean, but somehow I was always crouched down, wiping up some mystery spill that had dried to a tack.

One day, I watched Jake step over one of those sticky spots three different times on his way in and out of the kitchen and I broke. I begged him for help.

I begged him to help clean his own goddamn house.

I blamed my tears on being up all night nursing the baby. Jake gallantly offered to take over cleaning the kitchen after meals... but he did it the same way we'd decided chore allocation when we were first married — he'd do that in exchange for me getting up with the baby at night, every time. He helped me, I helped him, I guess was the theory.

"I have to be fresh for work, I have to be able to think, or I'll lose my job and this will all fall apart for us," he told me.

It made sense. I was at home taking care of Annabelle, anyway. I could sleep when the baby slept. Then I went back to work, and since I was used to getting up in the night, I kept doing it.

Jake and I were college-educated. And to be fair, last year Annabelle weaned, giving me a full three months of unbroken, choreless sleep before I got pregnant again. I liked to think we had what the sociology textbooks called an Egalitarian Marriage—equal. We did in theory. But in practice, it wasn't too much different than my parents' setup.

One day, to spread the love around, I thanked Jake for taking care of all the bills, for doing his part to take care of our family.

"Oh, it's mostly automated," he had said. "All set up to autopay. I just skim the credit card bill once every few months to check."

For a while, I thought about that a lot, especially when he came home from work to have a beer in front of the computer while my day of chores was still going strong. Then I decided I wouldn't think about it anymore at all, because I didn't like the way I felt when I thought about it.

My big stand this pregnancy: Jake would sort the dirty laundry. I'd wash and dry it, fold it. He would put it away. But somehow, even though I've done laundry every Sunday morning at 10 am, it was still my job to call "LAUNDRY" and for him to groan. Which at first I got; I was making him do something new, something I used to do for free. But bit by bit, his foot-dragging was killing me, because laundry was the mess we all made by existing and wearing clothes. I didn't do this to him.