The veggies sit on the kitchen island wrapped in their garish cellophane bags. They’re the usual Persian cukes, red bell pepper, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, and scallions purchased for Hubbie’s salad the salad he once made only for himself – the salad he now makes for both of us.
Early this morning – really early, before my workout, before my shower – I dragged myself to the grocery store to buy them.
Why?
I know him. We’ve been married for close to four decades. I could see the sour face he’d make as he opened the empty vegetable bins in the fridge. That face stings, enough to send me to the grocery store in my housecoat and slippers.
Younger people don’t do this – or at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe. Their marriages are egalitarian and fair, the chores divided evenly with each partner sharing in the shopping, cooking, cleaning and child and/or pet care. That’s the right way, but my gut tells me it sounds too good to be true. That’s why I never attempted it.
Hubbie and I are OG. As women have for most of recorded history, I do the lion’s share of the housework. It works for me; that is, until it doesn’t.
I don’t mind shopping, choosing the veggies, bagging it, paying and hauling it home in my granny cart, but that’s as far as it goes. Our house has 20 steps, one flight down and another up to get in. At the grand age of 67, I am no longer willing or even able to navigate the two staircases while lugging my cart.
Today I ask Hubbie to assist me.
“I need help,” I said.
Note the “I” which replaces the other version “you need to help me.” The goal is not to command because commanding sparks rebellion.
Hubbie is allergic to be ordered around, even gently. It’s probably historical; his late father was a tyrant and a rager. He frightened his household, including his wife, my late mother-in-law, a woman who terrorized school children at her teaching job.
At home, she tiptoed around him. She wore herself down taking on after-school tutoring jobs to avoid his tongue lashings when the credit card bills arrived. She used her own money to buy her own stuff.
Unlike his son, my father-in-law avoided veggies. “Rabbit food,” he called it, so my mother-in-law pureed them and snuck them into his soup.
I am like my mother-in-law, resupplying Hubbie with his veggie stash to keep the peace, she and I both conflict-averse people pleasers. Are all women? Or perhaps only pre-feminist women? In the Hebrew Bible, part of Eve’s curse which followed the apple-eating episode, was that she’d desire to please her husband.
I park the shopping cart on the top of the first flight of steps, waiting for Hubbie to bring it in. Hubbie lies on our bed in his bathrobe relaxing after his hour-long extra-hot bath. He is in no rush to go anywhere.
The day is warm. I worry about the vegetables rotting. That thought is almost enough to force me outside but I don’t go. I change the channel in my head. Reading a New York Times piece on grey divorce. My peers, it seems, are divorcing in droves.
Should I join? I hate lawyers.
Is failure to put away the veggies a good enough reason?
On Instagram, my favorite is a young blonde comic called Tiferet whose handle is Tuches Offan Tish, (Yiddish for ass on the table). Today Tiferet mimics biblical heroines as performing the candy trauma dump: first Sara, whose husband nearly slaughtered her son, then Batsheva who married the peeping Tom who watched her shower, and then Tamar who slept with her father-in-law.
This cracks me up. Thank G-d I didn’t yet put on eye makeup. It would be wrecked by my tears. Then I go upstairs. The veggies are on the kitchen island. Who brought them in? Hubbie, our grown-up son who still lives at home, or perhaps the vegetables flew from the cart onto the counter where they sit in their cellophane bags.
My salad is in the fridge waiting for me.