The Learning Umbrella

It is so hard for me to sit and rest.  Not because people aren’t trying to help me, or because the kids want me to get up (although they really do want me to get up and play with them), but because I just hate sitting still this long.  My DH has long accused me of “being unable to rest - or watch anyone else doing it either”.  It’s kind of true - I do not like idleness.

When I look back at my childhood, I think I soaked up a very Protestant-German work ethic, which explicitly stated that hard work was what made a person good and worthy.  My parents were DIY’ers of long standing, and also folks who were self-employed because they firmly believed that if you wanted something done right, you did it yourself.  They never worked for (or with) anyone very long, and they rarely even had friends help with work.  For the most part, we did it ourselves, as a family.  Of course these fierce DIY’ers would choose to homeschool their own kids!  They did it all themselves.  I remember my father warning me not to break my leg when I went to the playground, because he would just set it himself and he didn’t have any fancy painkillers at home.  (I think this was mostly a joke - he talked like that a lot - but I can also totally picture him rigging up a home splint and deciding it would be a waste of time and money to go to the hospital).

So I have always felt that my ability to work hard and not ask or hire others (besides my family) to do it for me is what makes me worthwhile as a person.  I even have an instinctive mistrust of ”labor saving” devices and products, prefering to rely on old-fashioned elbow grease to get things clean and human labor to wash the dishes.

And here I am, reclining in a ”lazy boy”, while my DH tackles the list of chores I wrote out for him.  He’s attempting to clean the bathrooms - which has turned into a major production and so far taken him almost an hour.  I don’t remember the last time he cleaned a bathroom (probably not since the military deployment?), so it’s no wonder it’s taking a while.  He’s also coughing and gagging, because I guess it’s pretty gross.  I don’t know - I do it all the time but I’m not as easily grossed out by “organic smells and materials” (his phrase for everything from snot to diapers to cat throw up on the rug).

I feel like I should be in there doing the bathroom, and shoo him out with a cluck of disapproving condescension - a sort of “silly boy, this job is for someone who can handle it”.  That’s what I usually do when he starts to gag at something in the house.  I probably like to feel superior, if I’m being honest about it.  One of the compensations of doing all this houswork is the feeling that they couldn’t do with out me - they’d be lost and helpless.  Now I feel lost and helpless, needing him to take care of me. 

So here’s something for me to work on, since this all sounds pretty neurotic as I type it out.  I need to let go, do tasks for their own sakes rather than to validate my own worth as a person, and let others be responsible for things also.  They may not do the jobs the way I would do them (for instance, they may gag and even throw up after changing a diaper), but I shouldn’t take over for them.  This internal work might be long term - right now I just want to feel better so I can jump into the housework again and reclaim my little kingdom!