Fascinating Womanhood

Folks, I am a really bad man. 
For example. Early in September, I tried to mow my grass for the first time ever. 

In my flip flops.  That was my first bad idea. The other bad idea was trying to mow while the grass was still wet. You should wait until it dries a bit. That's what I found out after stalling both my lawn mower and my neighbor's. The first time the mower died, I thought: it must be the machine. The second time I knew: it's me.

I stood there in the backyard unsuccessfully fighting back tears, afraid I'd completely ruined my neighbor's nice lawn mower. I knew the machine wasn't out of gas (I'd awkwardly filled it up just moments before), I'd seen my neighbor expertly mow his grass (and mine!) with it for weeks, and my own lawn mower had withered at my touch already that morning.

Shane saw me from his back porch and came to my rescue. Just some clogged damp grass. Try again in a few hours, he encouraged. I wiped my eyes and nodded and followed him around to the garage. "I'm sure I'll get this sooner or later!" I croaked.

As soon as the garage door closed, I sat on the steps and laughed and cried.

Oh, my poor neighbors, I thought!
Oh, my sweet Wesley, I mourned. "This is your job," I chided him through my tears, sure that he could hear me, and that he was simultaneously enjoying my ridiculousness and aching for my burden. A few minutes later, Shane's wife Laura, my dear friend, came over to give me a sisterly hug. Which I needed.

After chatting briefly, I left to run a few errands and then came back to face the grass.
"I shall conquer this," I said in my best Collin Firth voice, "I shall."

And I did.

Mowing the lawn is kind of like vacuuming, I tell myself.  Just....fresher?

Speaking of fresh, I was super excited the other day to realize that our car registration was two weeks expired.  Mr. DMV was really kind about walking me through the fairly simple renewal process that Wes had always quietly taken care of.

And quietly is how our kids were supposed to be sleeping the other night when I prepped Lucy's room for a paint job.  I wasn't worried about the project, in spite of Spencer's wakeful "helpfulness".  I figured it'd be easy enough.  And it was.  After I finally managed to pry the lid off of the paint can. 

Years ago when we were freshmen, Wes and I sat outside my apartment building with a group of friends while our neighbor read aloud excerpts from a mid century guide book on becoming the ideal woman/wife.  We all laughed and laughed at the outdated, seemingly weak picture of womanhood the book portrayed.  According to the author, a woman should never attempt "male" tasks, or if she must, she should purposefully execute the task poorly so her husband would feel manly about correcting her mistakes. Pictures, for example: If a woman were to hang pictures, she should hang them crookedly.

That became somewhat of a running joke between Wes and me. I'd e-mail him with a generic question like, "What you been up to?" He'd write back something like, "Oh, just leveling some crooked picture frames."

Har, har, har.

But for all our laughing, guess who hung the pictures and fixed the plumbing in our marriage?  Wasn't me.  Guess how I oohed and awed when Wes, after a whole Saturday's worth of work, repaired the kitchen sink in our first little married apartment?  (And guess how he  s m i l e d?)

I don't begrudge the opportunity to learn some new things.  It has been and will be good for me.  After all, I really don't believe women should be helpless or incompetent.  But the learning process is a bit humbling.  It's hard to admit I can't do everything.  It's hard to ask for help.  I have been so grateful for my brothers and fathers and friends who have patiently, graciously stepped in at the right times and helped to ease the weight of my transitioning responsibilities. Wes's dad is here at my house right now, actually, helping me to get started on a rather manly project that I'm pretty excited about.

But more than ever before, I kind of want to shout from the rooftops, it's nice to be a team! 
Marriage is the very best lifestyle around! 
Regardless of who mows the lawn and who stirs the soup, two is better than one!
And traditional roles really aren't as bad as they're cracked up to be in modern society. 
I can't tell you how much I'd love to hear Wes hammering nails in the wall while I whisk our little Indians off to bed.

(Aside:  Spencer has always reminded me of Michael in Disney's Peter Pan.  Maybe because of the way he drags his teddy bear around, maybe because of the way he looks in one piece jammies, maybe just because I've always loved Michael and I love my little boy.  Whatever the reason, the fancied likeness was locked into place the other night when I found Spencer covered in washable war paint just before bed.  I washed and kissed his little face and felt like a Mrs. Darling kind of mother.  Which was delightful.) 

I hope this post doesn't come across as a pity party.  The mentioned experiences, and all the others like them, have been has humorous as they have been hard.  Just thought it should go down on the record that,  try as I may, I'm not a good man!  (I don't think men cry about lawn mowers =)