Take A Cab

 

Way back in my thirties, I was living in New York with my husband, our two children and a really great dog named Mandy. The husband and children were great too, but they were driving me to despair. Amy aged eight and Tony aged seven and Jim aged a bit older seemed to ignore any suggestion, hint, or screaming fit about helping me with household chores. Unmade beds, dirty dishes, dust, or debris never seemed to faze them. 

Jim wrote for a television show. He had glamour. I had laundry. He would help but he was very busy writing  and he loved to play the piano. The kids just loved to play. Mandy just wanted us all together in the same room, clean or otherwise.

I began to doubt the whole idea of being a working mother. I wasn't making much money as an anthropology librarian. The library was lovely, but I was completely bored with cataloging treatises on matrilinear family structures. 

It  just seemed like I was running around all day, rushing to meet  the kids at school, rushing to work, rushing to walk the dog, rushing to make dinner, rushing to drag gargantuan loads of laundry up to the laundromat.  

The apartment was beyond messy. It was downright  disgusting. But apparently only in my eyes. The rest of them didn't seem to mind at all.

I began having dreams.  I would be riding the bus and it would skip my stop and take me to some strange neighborhood and leave me there to find my way home. Over and over, I would be abandoned in the Bronx or Queens, where I would wander around looking for a bus or even a subway home . 

This went on night after night until I dreamed I was plunked down somewhere in Staten Island. I couldn’t find a bus or a train or even the ferry, so although I knew it would cost a fortune, I hailed a cab. And who was driving the cab? Well I don’t know who he was but he wore a cap labeled Psychotherapist.

I had been spoken to. How could I ignore  such a blatant message? I found a therapist  who suggested I make a big chart of the chores that had to be done and show who was doing them. Me.

And just like in fairy tales, it worked!  Maybe the three of them were tired of being yelled at, but the kids and Jim each agreed to do  their own laundry, cook a meal a week and do the  dishes too. The kids learned how to operate the laundromat machines. They did dishes - maybe 24 hours late. They just threw their toys and stuff in a closet. And maybe we ate too many dinners of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. But they were doing it. 

So was Jim. He did his own laundry, cooked Sunday brunch and cleaned when we had company coming. 

I became a school librarian. I tripled my salary, kept  the same schedule as my kids and learned that I really enjoyed working with teenagers.

Anyway, the moral is: when you are in the middle of a dark wood or even Staten Island, hail a cab. It’s worth the expense.