Have You Ever Gone Hungry?

"How can I possibly succeed at my side of our division of labor, if I haven't bought food to cook for all the people I love?" I wondered out loud toward Greg. It was a dramatic question; I had loaded it, and was ready to injure myself with his answer or mine. A couple of weeks ago, I was getting worked up about my dreaded grocery lists. I gave voice to my worries that we would not have food for dinner since I had not forced the stars and lists and car and trading hours of the stores to align properly. I was defeated by my own lack of organization.

Since we have been in Australia, we have owned one car. Before we left the USA, I knew having one car would be challenging for me, and that Greg would usually need the car traveling back and forth between the projects he manages at work. I knew before we came, in theory, what my life would be with one car, and I committed to it beforehand. In actual practice, figuring out public transportation and biking and routes and kids is part of my adventure, and generally, I like solving the four dimensional puzzle of going places. Most of the time, I enjoy my new, car-lite life, but sometimes I struggle with the organizational powers required to make everything run smoothly in our little castle.

Having one car has forced me to be much more organized than I ever have been in taking care of my family, and much more organized than I like to be. My natural gifts are creative, not organizational, to put it quite mildly. For our family's day to day life to rest on my organizational "aptitude" feels quite precarious at times. I sometimes suspect that Greg and I might need another wife to keep us organized; but, not being bigamists, I guess we'll have to do without. For better or worse, and by our mutual choice, I am the CEO who runs the daily life of our home.

In spite of my deficiencies, I seem, usually, to be able to plan for appointments, so that they are on days when I have the car and can thus keep them. I don't find it too difficult to keep nappies and wipes and snacks with me, clipped to the back of my bike trailer. I don't usually struggle with being organized enough to eat at certain times so that I don't run out of the energy that will peddle MJ and I back up the big hill to my house. I love to cook; I like to plan meals. All the aforementioned organizational tasks in my life I accomplish with relative ease; but separating the items I need for individual meals out to individual store lists--butcher, baker, candlestick-maker? This task baffles and tortures my dreamy, creative brain. The actual separating of groceries into lists feels to me like swimming in honey, and I feel like I may drown at any time while my pen rests in in my hand with a pad of paper before it. Will I transfer all the right items to the right store lists from the menus? Did I get everything listed? Will I find almonds at the grocery store or the fruit and veg? Should I list it twice so I don't forget? How many packs of diapers? Will I come in under budget? Are we out of toilet paper? What if I forget something and I don't have the car to go get it later in the week? The questions hang on me like a pack of little screaming dirty kids (not my kids--really bad, annoying ones).

That's where I was, mentally, when I stood in the kitchen, discouraged and hopeless, my head hanging down, pen and unfinished lists in hand. Greg just walked over, and gave me a hug. He looked in my eyes and said, "Have you ever gone hungry since we have been married?" The truth, as usual, pierced through my neurotic perfectionism.

Greg's kind, honest reminder soothed my tortured mind, and silenced all the screaming questions on my list. I don't have to perfect my lists to be a good wife and mother. I don't run this family alone. Greg knows me, even, maybe especially, my myriad weaknesses. He has known and loved me since I was 19, and far crazier and more disorganized than I am now. Incredibly, he has loved me for more than a third of my life, through 90 lbs of baby-weight gained and lost, through depression and bad hair color, through colicky infants and stretch-marks and unhealed insecurities. He has helped me wage an intense and enduring war against my own perfectionism, and he would help win this day's battle too. His love has been sure and steady and calm and true; and love doesn't mind picking up a few things at the grocery store to tide us over until I can face all my dreaded lists. Thanks honey. You're the best, and I hope you know that you are my hero.