Intentions

Thursday, August 12, 2021

Today was the first day of school for the kids. I had to be at work early, so I couldn’t see them off on the bus, but I will get the chance tomorrow.

I’ve decided that the three afternoons a week that the kids are practicing at the same time, I will claim those hours as my writing hours. They are mine. I will try to remember my outdoor chair that I use to watch their games, but when I don’t have that, I will sit in the grass or against fences or in my car if the weather is appropriate, which is not the case right now. It is soupy and the air is heavy and thick. A good rainstorm will clear it out. But not before practice is over, hopefully. So I will sit and I will put words on my computer through the tapping of my fingers. Or perhaps sometimes I will journal with pen and paper, like they used to. 

Right now I am sitting against a rock. I forgot the chair. It’s jutting into my back, but there is a nice breeze that is keeping me cool and the sky is cobalt blue. I hear coaches coaching and children playing. Sophie’s curly ponytail bounces in between the cracks of the fence. She doesn’t like to know I am watching her. It makes her nervous. 

When Sophie began preschool three years ago, with the two older kids already in school, I remember reveling in the 2 hours or so everyday where she would be occupied. That first day of school, I sat down at a coffee shop and I wrote. I wrote my intentions. I had every desire of using those two hours a day, and ten hours a week, to write. Instead, I went grocery shopping. Alone. I did the dishes, without distraction. I sat down. I probably napped. I did all the things I had always done as the stay at home parent, but in those two hours I did them faster. 

Fast forward three years, to the day, and here I am, writing on their first day of school. I am writing my intentions, again, but there is something else mulling in my mind. An uncertainty, a doubt, a wondering. 

I now work full time. I had always thought that, once my kids were school age, life would slow down. It wouldn’t be so exhausting. I would feel more stable. And in some ways, I do. Sleep is the number one reason. I can now count on an uninterrupted night of sleep. Game changer. 

But I am still, mostly, exhausted. The days blur from one to the next. And this is with getting away with the bare minimum. The house is constantly a disaster. Dishes routinely fill the sink. Laundry is always piled in my room. Mail and papers pile up. The rug underneath the kitchen table is disgusting. I showered 3 days ago, I think? 

Lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps the problem is not me. To expect one human to do all that is insane. 

The thought struck me the other day that the problem is two fold: one, in general, domestic care tends to fall on women, even when women work outside the home. And two, on a larger, perhaps more consequential scale, society is simply not structured in a way that allows for families to either a) have one parent stay at home to manage the running of a household (a huge undertaking), or b) provide high enough pay wherein if both parents choose/want to work, they can afford to outsource some of the domestic tasks. Right now, most families have to have two working parents just to pay the bills and stay afloat, and to increase the odds that hopefully one of them will have employment with half decent health benefits. 

So, while I am staring that straight in the face, I am left skeptical that I can pull off writing for three hours a week—which, in theory sounds like a luxury, but for me it is a lifeline—when I can barely manage the day to day necessities. 

Where do we go from here? We leave the soccer fields. We drive home yawning under the now grey blue sky, waiting for the rain. We shower, we eat dinner. We write down our intentions, even if we fail at them. We pack the lunches and try to remember to put the water beside our bedside table. We vote. AOC wore a shirt that says: Policy is my love language. We try to be ok.