I Can't Believe I Have
Dishpan Hands!
by Joseph Oberle
As a kid, I hated to do
dishes. I alternated weekly dishes duty with my brothers
and sisters, and it was the bane of my existence. While I
wiped the dishes my mom washed, I would look out the
backyard window at the neighborhood
kids playing and plead: ”Am I done yet?”
Once I nearly severed my
middle finger by wiping a just-sharpened butcher knife. I
loved it because I got to skip a turn in the rotation. My
older brother said I did it on purpose, but I thought I
deserved more time off. If only a little blood could
excuse me now.
The household chores you
despised as a kid change when they become your regular
duties as an adult. No one else is there to do them, so
you just accept them and do them yourself, sometimes even
taking pride in their completion. This is how I’ve
come to look at my duties as a househusband –
although I didn’t reach that point easily.
I went through three stages
of development in my relationship to housework: denial
that I actually had to do it; acceptance, coupled with
marginal performance; and excellence – trying to be
the best househusband I could be.
In the first stage, I
stalled by telling Lora that I didn’t even belong in
the kitchen – I’ve got an old construction-job
injury to my back that seems to bother me only when
I’m stooped over the sink scouring pots and pans.
Lora was not sympathetic.
But my personal discomfort
is the least of it. I’m a danger to the kitchen and
probably to anyone that comes near me when I’m
cooking or cleaning.
I once dropped a hot stove
rack on the vinyl kitchen floor, branding it for
perpetuity. I set Seth’s red popsicle on the
butcherblock counter for later and forgot about it –
and then cleaned the stain with a scouring pad. I slice
vegetables without a cutting board, leaving notches on
the countertop and dining room table.
One time, I started a fire
in a pan by letting oil burn too long. My first reaction
was to put the fire out with a towel. When the towel
started on fire, I took the pan to the sink and put water
in it, making the fire bigger. When I carried the pan
back to the stove to cover it with a lid, I sloshed some
oil on the floor and started another fire there.
I half expected to see
Oliver Hardy standing near me, smacking me on the head
with his hat. Of course, then I could have used it to
cover the fire in the pan.
I didn’t fare much
better with the laundry. I couldn’t use my
college-days method of hauling the clothes home to my mom
on the weekends. And as a bachelor, I had done my laundry
in one load, whether I waited a week or a month.
So when I took over the
clothes-washing duty at our house, Lora feared for her
white clothes. For several months, she wouldn’t let
me near them. I certainly didn’t deserve this level
of paranoia. So what if I’ve turned white shirts
green and pink, reduced sweaters to unidentifiable baggy
garments, washed wrinkles into clothes, and lost legions
of Seth’s little socks (but never in pairs). For
some reason, my own wash always turns out fine –
perhaps because it all turned to one color long ago.
However, as time wore on
– and Lora’s time became limited – I was
forced to take over her clothes as well. No big deal,
laundry is easy: put the clothes in the washer, pour the
soap in and turn it on, right? Wrong. Apparently,
women’s and children’s clothes are made
differently than men’s. According to Lora, clothes
have to be sorted into like colors. A launderer has to
turn shirts and sweatshirts inside out so the lettering
or designs won’t be destroyed. Kids’ clothes
must be presoaked because toddlers like to wear their
meals before they eat them. (Incidently, you can always
tell whether your young kid is right- or left-handed by
which sleeve is covered with more food.) All of this
dramatically increases the time spent doing laundry.
Lora also insisted that I
empty all pockets before throwing pants in the washer.
She didn’t want her clothes to have little white
paper speckles like those stuck to mine after I ran a
load through with used tissues in my pants pockets. Every
time I did my wash, the laundry room looked like ants had
thrown a ticker-tape parade.
I cavalierly laughed at
Lora’s suggestion to put her underclothes in small
mesh bags because I didn’t want the extra work. If
it can’t be tossed into the machine with a minimal
amount of handling, I don’t want to do it. As a
result, I probably have the record for the most busted
bras and ripped underwear – outside the bedroom.
Other household chores I
felt confident I could handle – mainly because I
didn’t do them. Toys spread around the house stayed
that way until after Seth went to bed. Scouring the
bathtub was unnecessary; the shower curtain, if I
remembered to close it, hid the tub. And any piece of
food stuck in the carpet that couldn’t be sucked up
by a vacuum cleaner was probably stuck there for good.
As for dusting – well,
that was my sisters’ job when we were kids, so I
never learned how to do it. Besides, dust always forms an
even pattern, and if you don’t disturb it, you never
know you need to dust. So I prefer to just leave it
alone. I plead guilty to being dusting-impaired.
And then there’s
diapers. The only thing I can compare changing diapers to
is when I was working at a soybean manufacturing plant
one summer as part of a crew that was ripping down the
old parts of the plant. We cut apart the old pipes that
used to carry the soybean meal – it now had rotted
inside them after several years of nonuse. My job was to
get rid of the rotten meal that poured onto the ground. I
would stand by and silently pray the pipes would be dry
and empty when the steamfitter cut them open, but they
usually held a little surprise. It was a crapshoot as to
which color meal flowed out of the pipe, as well as the
smell that went with it. Yellow was relatively okay,
because it was still the color of soybeans and probably
had only been there a few years (a blink of the eye in
rotting-soybeans time). White was bad because it meant
the concoction had started to break down; it tended to
singe my nose hairs. And black was the worst because it
had probably been rotting for decades; the smell caused
me to long for summers on my uncle’s farm, shoveling
manure. The only way to stop smelling the stuff was to
remove it, and the only person to do it was me. Changing
diapers is similar. I hope the diaper is high and dry,
with no surprises until the kid’s mother is home.
But the smell usually forces my hand, so I pray for a
normal color because some are certainly more odoriferous
than others. Then as now, I have no choice other than to
clean it up.
And just as the chore of
diaper-changing became mine, at some point, I started to
become more comfortable with other household chores, as
well. I stopped battling the impulse to reject housework
as beneath me and decided to do a good job at it. While
the time of the change is unclear, the manifestations of
it have been plain to see.
First off, I agreed with
Lora to do the laundry according to her instructions
(except for mine – hey, no need to mess up a good
thing). I began to pride myself on how many loads I could
do in a day. And I started to clean the lint trap on the
dryer in a timely manner, actually enjoying the act of
peeling the entire layer off in one motion. When I told
Lora of this simple pleasure, she looked at me as if the
laundry room walls should be padded.
At the dining room table I
became a dynamo, quickly finishing my meal and racing to
the sink to start the dishes. In college, I had a rule
that nobody was allowed to get up from the table and do
dishes immediately after a meal – it must be done
later, after we’ve digested our food (thus
alleviating my guilt at not wanting to do it myself). But
now, if the condiments and used dishes were not cleared
away by the time Lora was done eating, I started to lose
it and sat in my chair fidgeting at each passing minute.
I got to the point where I
couldn’t rest until everything was done. If
housework was my job, I decided, it was going to be done
well and on time. “Relax a bit,” said Lora,
used to a more leisurely dining experience. “You
know, I heard some woman on the radio say that she was
having real trouble in her marriage because her husband
nearly takes things out of her hand at the table.” I
acknowledged her point and gave her back the catsup
bottle. But I had turned a corner in my career as a
househusband.
My dad had always told me
to do my job well, no matter what it was, and to leave it
like a man. Well, while I might feel more like a man
leaving housework than doing it, it was my job
regardless, and I planned to heed his advice. I assumed
Lora’s comments were just jealousy toward my
newfound prowess. I did the job well, too, until last
Friday evening when I was furiously trying to clean the
house for the weekend. I was planning to watch an NFL
playoff game and wanted to do it with a clear conscience
and a clean house. I had washed every stitch of clothing
not in use, cleaned and vacuumed the house, clothed and
fed Seth (and Lora, for that matter) three times, and was
just finishing the supper dishes. Seth had been
particularly dependent and incontinent all day, which
made my job tougher and my nerves all the more frazzled.
Still, I unwaveringly kept
my eyes on the prize, which these days is a clean,
comfortable home I can be proud of. As I was wiping down
the sink after the last dish had been done and the
dishwater drained, Lora waltzed into the kitchen. She
pulled a plastic cup from the cupboard and filled it with
water. Innocently relating Seth’s latest cute trick,
she drank a few swallows, poured out the rest, and then
set the cup next to the sink. I believe she had left the
kitchen by the time I blew – perhaps she didn’t
even see the steam emanating from my ears. But it
didn’t matter: she had done nothing wrong. She was
merely thirsty and had gotten herself a drink. It was me
that needed correcting.
When I settled down and
analyzed my problem, I realized that as a journalist,
I’ve always experienced closure. You write a story,
it’s published, and then it’s history. You move
on to the next one. Barring nasty letters or troublesome
libel suits, no story ever requires effort after
it’s finished. The same, unfortunately, can’t
be said about housework. The drudgery of housework
continues ad infinitum, no matter how well you do it.
Even while I’m finishing a chore, the next one is
already preparing itself. While I do dishes, the rest of
the family is eating; while I do laundry, they sit around
dirtying their clothes; while I vacuum one room, the
other rooms are filling up with dry skin. And of course,
Seth’s digestive tract doesn’t have a pause
button. In the end, though admirable, my diligence is
somewhat dubious – fame in housework is fleeting.
While a clean house is nice
for the moment, it’s a matter of “What have you
done for me lately?” Pursuing excellence in
household chores is futile, because they never are done.
I now know what every housewife who ever strapped on an
apron knows.
And all I have is one
question, for anyone who will answer: “Am I done
yet?”
Joe
Oberle resides in Fridley, MN with his wife Lora and
their 3 children Seth, Tessa and Paige. This story is an
exerpt from his new book, Diary of A Mad Househusband.
If you would
like to drop Joe a note with your comments, thoughts or
just so say hi my email address is househusb@fathersworld.com . To find out how to order the book
Diary
Of A Mad Househusband click here.
Introduction to Diary of Mad
Househusband
Chapter 1. Trading Places
Cheerios Everywhere!
Suggestions?
Feedback? We'd love to hear from you.
—
TOP —
Bulletin Boards | Den | Fatherhood | Goofing Off | Health & Fitness Legal | News | Recipes | Resources | Shopping
Copyright © 1998
Father's World
|
