Here is a typical exchange between me and my husband:
Carlos: Do you have to cook large meals every single night every single time you see your family, both at our house and at theirs?
Me: Yes.
Carlos: Why?
Me: I don't know, that's just how I've always done it. That way, I know what we're having, when we're having it, and besides, everyone likes my cooking.
Enter my brother-in-law: Do we have to have Mexican every night?
Me: I'll make burgers.
Carlos: Why do you have to make anything? Why can't someone else make something? Why can't someone else take this on? For even one night?
Me: Um.......
And there is my problem. I really don't have an answer to his question. In the last few years, I have pulled way back. I have been able to let others help. I have learned to delegate. I have learned to order pizza. Even better, I have learned to let someone else decide that we are having pizza and then order it.
Most of the time.
With my extended family, it is very difficult, because I am the oldest, and because I am a child of divorce, a child of a very emotional mother, and a natural type A personality, I just tend to take over.
I wrote a couple of years back about how I had to learn to let go while I was pregnant. I realized that I was vulnerable and that I needed my husband to be the partner he had been trying so desperately for years to be.
But I am still, at heart, a control freak.
My normal schedule requires me to be at work 3 late afternoons and evenings during the week and one Saturday morning and early afternoon. These hours make it so that, six days a week, I get to wake up with my daughter and "create" her day. She is my baby. I plan her meals, her naps, her bedtime. When I leave, I post a note on the fridge, every work day, with detailed instructions as to what time she will eat, which portions of the meal she should have more of, when she should get her bath (don't forget to brush her teeth!), how many books she should get before bed, and so on. By the time I get home, she is asleep. When she wakes up, we bring her into our bed, and she is my snuggly fresh morning baby once again.
Saturdays are different. I do not create (read: control) her day. She is home with her father. He doesn't really brush her hair. He dresses her like a ragamuffin. They make a huge mess of my house. She is a different baby when I come home at around 5 in the afternoon.
But I have allowed myself to enjoy it. I laugh at her crazy clothes. I smile at the pictures of her my husband posts on Facebook, thinking, well, she will definitely experience both sides of the gender perspective.
Recently, however, I agreed to teach classes all day on Sundays. It was only for five Sundays, I reasoned, and I could unquestionably use the extra money right before Christmas. The added bonus is that I really love teaching these reading classes for my second part time job.
And I have really loved teaching the classes. I have not, on the other hand, enjoyed two day times away from my house. By Sunday night I am a ball of homemaker stress. The things that are so cute on Saturdays are so irritating by the end of the next day.
Have you guys not done your chores this week?
Why is Celaya's high chair tray still dirty?
Didn't I ask you to get the Christmas ornaments down?
Why are these lights still not up?
Really? You couldn't make the bed?
Do you actually think that dirty diapers belong on the floor? That that is their home? There's a diaper pail, you know.
A full dishwasher and a sink full of dishes? REALLY?!
And, to use my toddler's favorite expression, "toys everywhere!"
Now, mind you, this really is mostly my fault. I am aware that my brother needs constant reminders. And I specifically tell my husband, "don't worry about anything but keeping the baby happy and healthy." To be fair, my men always get the things done that I ask, and remind, them to do, and my baby is smiling and laughing when I get home. The logical part of me acknowledges these facts.
But don't be fooled by my seemingly calm, reasonable demeanor. The I-wouldn't-have-done-it-this-way factor that runs strongly throughout the very fabric of my being bubbles up to the surface by Sunday night. And the control freak mother in me demands that I check Celaya over and over from head to toe for peculiarities that might have cropped up over the weekend. Is that a flea bite? Why does she have a flea bite? Why is her runny nose even redder than this morning? Have you been using paper towels to wipe her nose? Why is her diaper so heavy? What if she gets a diaper rash? Is she acting strangely to you? She seems a bit delirious. What's that smell?
I know. I've said it before. You've probably said it before. Poor Carlos.
So, fortunately, today was my last Sunday. The classes were great. The time away from home was not. I can willingly go back to being humorously tolerant of my little family's Saturday chaos.
Why?
Because I can run around and restore the order to it all on Sunday.
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