Role Reversal

So it turns out that Kyle is a better house keeper than I--and it is glorious! It is absolutely amazing to walk in to a clean home and I didn't do it. Lovin' it, lovin' it, lovin' it. And the truth was that I wasn't any kind of house keeper. I was a writer. And a mother. And a wife. And I take to those things with a focus that is sometimes good and sometimes bad. When I am being one, I am usually not being the others (with the exception that mother sneaks in and demands its due attention whenever it wants.) People could come over unannounced and I wouldn't be embarrassed (much), but let's just say my source of pride did not come from clean baseboards.

But the blessings of going back to work have surpassed that of an effortlessly, clean home. Everyone should be so lucky to have the opportunity to walk in each other's shoes. We keep having these moments when we just look at each other, realizing I am repeating his lines and he is reciting mine and we go, "Ohhhhhhh, that's what you always meant." And we just laugh. He now understands why I would follow him around like a puppy dog when he got home (because I hadn't talked to an adult all day). I now know that when he said he didn't care if we went out to dinner or not on a Friday night, he really didn't care--he was just happy to be off work. He got irritated the other day when I didn't put the cinnamon back in the cabinet. (He rightly chose to keep that to himself at the time.)

One of my favorite moments came when he was mentioning how he wasn't able to complete one of the tasks he had on his to-do list, and, with a straight face, I just tilted my head and furrowed my brow saying, "Well, you have all day tomorrow to do it." Then I smiled, cuz I couldn't help it. He just shook his head, knowing how many times he had said that to me, unaware of what a day at home is really like. "Yeah. OK," he said and laughed despite himself and just went back to watching the Rangers.

I am sure this honeymoon phase won't last forever, but I am trying to enjoy while it does. It seems also that we are both better equipped to be sensitive to the other's daily plight since we have been there, done that. Not a bad way to function.