Of course we made up. Getting to the other side of our problems might be mine and Will’s relationship superpower. I’m a little more hardheaded than he is and holding a grudge is something I wish I wasn’t so good at, but here we are, waking up on the right side of the bed…together.
Yesterday was some much needed self care and self preservation. The solo breakfast, the clearance shoes, the pre-paid massage, and yes, the deep dark red paint that I have already started putting on the walls in the “powder” room. All self-care. Leaving first thing in the morning and trusting that Will could do the mother in law chores for one day…self preservation. I didn’t even bother worrying about whether he would do it right or do it the way I do it. None of that mattered. What mattered is that I didn’t have to do it. And ultimately, mother in law is a grown woman even though her memory is failing, she still knows how to make herself something to eat. She may not have had the daily fresh baked biscuit that I make her every day, but she knows how to make a peanut butter and banana sandwich and that’s good enough as far as I’m concerned. The dogs may not have eaten as early as they usually do, but, they were alive when I got home and I fed them. The messes I usually clean up when I wake up were still there when I got home. And that’s the thing about this whole situation, for me, and others in this same predicament.
I don’t think we need to feel obligated to give of ourselves until we’ve put ourselves into an early grave. Yes, things need to get done, but yesterday reminded me that it’s a whole lot more important to ensure that I am here for the next decade or five than to stress myself out every single day about all the things on my checklist left unchecked.
I cannot do everything alone. And even though Will is here to help, we have two different ideas of what that looks like and, if I’m being honest, we always have. I’ve always put more urgency on getting things done, Will has always been a little more lax when it comes to tidy homes and responsibilities. And it’s always worked. I pick up the slack when he’s not feeling it and he picks up the slack when I’m not feeling it and even though the way in which we pick up the slack for one another looks different, it still gets us through the day.
I had to remind myself of that yesterday. Since day one, Will and I have been really good at talking out the problems. I think he gets mad when my ratio of right to wrong exceeds his, but I attribute that to a harder life lived. I’ve always joked with him about being born with a silver spoon in his mouth and this situation is one of those things that has proven me right.
I’ve seen the past through boxes of memories and I know his mom was just trying to make her kid’s lives better than the one she had. That’s what we all try to do. And I think his dad was just trying to give his kids the kind of charmed life he had. Neither of them were wrong and non of it is Will’s fault that he grew up having.
My mom did the best she could, too. She tried to give us everything we needed and most of what we wanted when she could hustle it up. And my life followed that path. Always hustling to make sure my kids had what they needed. Always working on something a little out of the ordinary to make it happen. I think between the ages of 17-40, Will’s life and mine couldn’t have been more different. He was stereotypical college party, single dude, with parents he could always call to bail him out of a jam. I was stereotypical poor single mother trying to make ends meet while raising decent kids. My life was the definition of hustle. His was more like a shuffle.
So when my get up and just do kicks in, he’s still trying to make a plan. I don’t think either one of us is wrong. I think that’s just the nature of our raising. I’m sure he wishes he had more “do” in him the same way that I wish I had more “plan” in me, but our strengths balance each other out and we’ve managed to make it work this far, I don’t foresee it ending anytime soon. Or at least not until he wakes up and sees what I’ve done to the powder room.
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