Playing House
NS April 24th, 2007
I’ve slowly come to realise something lately.
My flat isn’t just my flat anymore, the place where I live, store my things, watch TV, eat, sleep and shower. To most people (of my age, anyway), a rented apartment is exactly those things. It serves a purpose, has a function and fits around the particulars of one’s life. That used to be me too.
But now. Now that I’m here all the time, for an average of 22.5 hours of every 24 in a day, it’s my office, my domain, my universe, my cell, my dream factory, my nucleus — and my responsibility. No matter how much my husband ‘helps’ or does things ‘for me’ (his words), these four walls, and everything that happens within them, are my responsibility because it is what I do now. This is my territory. Right or wrong, and against whichever principles, it is mine in a tangible way that didn’t exist before.
When I am out with friends, meeting new people, I often look out over the brim of my wine glass, mid-chortle, and then stop short because my ears begin to hear that familiar question: “And what do YOU do?” When the answer comes, smiles often falter and eyes often drop, even if briefly, as the questioner mumbles a “that’s nice” and flicks their eyes around the room in search of a new conversation, a route of escape. At that moment, something inside me both wilts and rages, like a flower whose pollen gets brighter the nearer to death it comes, stem arching like a ballerina bowing her body to the floor in what could be interpreted as either gracefulness or defeat.
I used to think, as a child and as a young woman, that being responsible for a house wasn’t much of ‘doing’ anything, just a cop out for women who never got over playing dress up with Mother’s pearls and who were too lazy, stupid or weird to get a job and use their brains. I never knew the pull of love, the sweetness of a baby’s smile, the pain in a mother’s heart when she hears her child cry, and what kind of effect that can have on a decision you thought you’d made long ago. I used to secretly sneer at those women, feeling superior in my certainty that I would return to work within months of the birth while they wasted away their skills, brains and the best years of their lives in a box in a suburb. I am now that woman and oh, do we reap what we sow.
Now I know what it is to be Hercules, but with the weight of the Home upon my shoulders instead of the World. It is my albatross, my assignment, my tour of duty. And like a soldier at war, there is no clocking out. There is no going home at the end of the day. Motherhood and domesticity have no coffee breaks.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not expecting martyrdom for this. I am not going to list the myriad of things I do all day or go into excruciating detail of how this place would crumble down to the ground without me. That would be defensiveness talking, a yearning within myself to justify my actions and decisions to others; others who may not understand or care to. It is merely the vastness of it all and how it conflicts with some of my core beliefs, that is just recently hitting me.
Because he works out of the house all day, anything my husband does to help in the evenings is a ‘bonus’. If he does the dishes, he says he did them for me. I know that part of this is that he just likes to tease me and he knows that phrase drives me mad, but I know the man well enough to know when he’s joking and when those are the words that came naturally to him, without thinking or joking. And as much as I know he loves me and values what I do as a full-time parent to our child, the house is still my obligation, even when we’ve both worked our 9-5 at our respective ‘jobs’ and are at home as equals. Part of me wants to lash out at that and strike it down. As a tried-and-true feminist, it goes against my belief system. But years of arguing, failing to understand how a man can really not remember to put a new liner in the trash can when he takes the garbage out, crying, pleading, reasoning, ignoring, rationalising and coming thisclose to giving up on it altogether have made me weary. And now that the Home is so much more to me than where I hang my hat, I wonder if anything needs to change or if I just need to redefine my idea of what the keeper of it does. Maybe I don’t actually want to relinquish control of my domain. Maybe I sabotage myself by expecting things to be a certain way and getting so upset when they’re not because this is all I have now. Or maybe it’s only come to matter so much because now it MEANS so much as well. I still don’t know, but I’m searching for answers, seeing as current methods and trains of thought aren’t working.
I’m very lucky in that my passion and my (prospective) career happen to be one in the same. And by writing in this blog, Londonist, and other outlets of creativity, I am still ‘using my brain’. This is furthering my opportunities, furthering my life. Not least of all because learning love and patience and humility are never wasted. I can’t say that I ever dreamed of this life, dreamed of playing peekaboo with a mischievous blonde who looks insanely like my husband but acts oh-so-much like me, while desperately writing and communicating and hoping and learning and reaching out to the vast unknown with the other. But if this is considered ‘playing house’, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had pretending. And it sure feels real to me.
