Anyway

There are no awards shows for this job. No Pulitzer Prize for Best Kept Family. No walks down the red carpet for simply doing what must be done. But I do it anyway. No one cares that I creatively used the corn on the cob from Sunday’s cookout in a casserole tonight. Or that I cooked the casserole while watching my brood and the neighbor kids torment Bakey the frog who we found in my Mom’s yard earlier in the day. No one would believe that I took a five-minute shower while my toddler and the carpet ate jelly from the jar. And it doesn’t matter that I took my son for a bike ride so he could use his muscles and taste the wind, or that I let my daughter walk to school with a friend, and checked up on them in the car. No one is calling the news to report that I cut my Mom’s grass while the boys played baseball and watched deer romping in the fields behind her house. This is my day, the minutiae that I choose and conquer until the sun goes down.

It might be lonely at the top with the pressures of the paparazzi and the fans, but it is lonely at the bottom too. Set the table, serve a meal, clear the table. Lather, rinse, repeat, through the day and into the night. Lay out clothes. Dress the children in the clothes. Wash the clothes. Fold the clothes. Reminds me of the old spiritual “That lucky old sun has nothing to do, but roll around heaven all day.” I have plenty to do all day, and feeding and clothing does not even touch on paying the bills, cleaning the house, nurturing the children by playing pretend or reading “Dinosaurs happy, dinosaurs sad, dinosaurs good and dinosaurs bad” until I want to gouge out my tongue. But I do it anyway.

And it isn’t the actual work that is drudgery. It is the trying to feel like it matters. Like somehow the effort I expend to read the BACKYARD MAGAZINE with my son matters more than if I let him watch television all day. Or the energy it takes to cook a healthy meal is worth it when the Taco Bell is right around the corner. Don’t get me wrong. I love my family and I am happy to nurture them. As Robert Frost says, “May no fate willfully misunderstand me/And half grant what I wish and snatch me away/Not to return../Earth’s the right place for love.” But sometimes I wouldn’t mind a thank you that I didn’t have to coerce from a pre-schooler’s lips, or a look of gratitude for something besides a popsicle.

I guess on nights like tonight I know just how Sisyphus felt as he rolled and rolled that rock up the hill. Weary, spent, and knowing that tomorrow will bring the same trudging and the same jobs that I just completed today. Maybe there should be a Nobel Prize for Completing the Inane on a Daily Basis. I might have a chance at that one . But I’m sure this is one of those jobs that has a more intrinsic reward. No one notices all I do, not even the youngsters who are fed and clothed and bathed. But their Mother does it anyway.