My husband and I had a fight over a toy vacuum cleaner last week. It was supremely stupid. Our daughter had taken the vacuum outside while she and I were playing in the backyard earlier in the day, and in the chaos of trying to wrangle a naked toddler (she does this fun thing where she takes all her clothes off outside), find all her clothes, pick up her outside toys, and bring in our water cups, etc., I forgot all about the vacuum. That is, until my husband, Jonathan, noticed it later in the evening while he was locking up the house. He asked me to go get it because he didn’t want it to get wet overnight and the batteries to corrode (although, let’s be honest, having one fewer noise making toy would be less than tragic…). At the time, I was eating a piece of pizza with one hand while clearing dishes in the kitchen in the other. I don’t remember what I said exactly, but it was snippy and rude and he didn’t take kindly to it. After a good bit of squabbling, I ended up spending the evening by myself upstairs.
Something slightly less dramatic but similar happened again this week. While we were tidying and getting ready to go upstairs for the night, Jonathan asked me to grab a couple of things from the coffee table and bring them to the kitchen so he wouldn’t have to make two trips. Irrationally angry at this request, I said no, that I was doing other things. Cue argument. After yet again going upstairs alone, I started thinking about why these two incidents in particular grated my nerves so much.
We do not have the perfect marriage. Like any couple living together and trying to raise kids, we have our miscommunications and our arguments. But we do have a good marriage, and the frequency of our arguments has been unusual lately. In context, this should not be surprising. Our world is full of stress right now. We’ve got a toddler, and we’re a couple of weeks away from having a newborn. We’re both tired. We’re both on edge. Add in a global pandemic and social isolation from being under self-imposed quarantine yet again in preparation of a hospital stay, and you’ve got a recipe for stress-induced arguments.
After some emotional digging, I realized what was happening. I feel invisible. I feel like the work I do in our home is unappreciated. I pick up the same toys multiple times every day. Wash and put away the same dishes. Vacuum and mop the same floors. Wipe the same countertops and tables. Fold and put away the same clothes (very literally right now because the only clothes I fit in are 5 dresses and 4 very old stretchy tank tops to sleep in). All day. Every day. Week after week. Month after month. I put so much energy into caring for my home and making sure that things are clean and tidy and peaceful. And no one sees it and no one cares. Yes, I chose this. And yes, I love having the ability to be home with my daughter. But no honest stay at home mom will tell you that she loves every aspect of it. So when my husband asks me to pick something up, I lose it. From his perspective, he’s just asking his wife — his teammate and partner in life — to help him with some small task. But to me, it feels like a slap directly in the face. I’ve been cleaning and tidying and taking care of our toddler all day, and his asking me to help him feels like a critique of my work. If I’d done my job, there wouldn’t be anything left for him to ask me to do.
As a stay at home mom, I’m at home a lot under normal circumstances, but I get out a good bit. I schedule playdates with friends, go to the gym, run errands, take my daughter to the playground, go grab the occasional coffee by myself, have drinks or dinner with the ladies, etc. I’m a natural homebody and generally enjoy being in my own space, but for the last six months, I’ve been mostly stuck at home with my daughter. Being home by choice is one thing, but feeling trapped there is entirely different. Like a lot of people right now, I’ve cut out all unnecessary activities outside my home. Stay at home moms can feel unappreciated and invisible in the best of circumstances, but that feeling has been magnified under the isolation brought on by trying to keep our families safe in the midst of a historic pandemic.
It’s weird to pull yourself out of your own life for a minute and think about how you are living through an event that will be in history books one day. Our grandkids and great grandkids are going to read about this time and finally understand why their crazy old grandparents have an entire closet full of toilet paper and wipes. We may not clean and reuse aluminum foil, but it’s naive to think that we won’t come out of this without our own quirks. I can only hope that the increased arguing with my husband is a temporary side effect and that once we’re back to some semblance of social normalcy, we will regain our balance.
If the last six months have taught me nothing else, it’s that moms are strong. Really, really strong. We have to be. We grow entire humans with our bodies and then are entrusted with raising them into fully functional adults. We put our kids’ and our families’ needs above our own. We do the dirty jobs. The monotonous jobs. The under appreciated jobs. We may break down under the weight of it all, but we wipe our tears, wash our faces, and do it all over again the next day. Because we have to. And because we love our babies more than life. We’re going to get through this pandemic. We’re going to put our lives back together. This too shall pass. And when it does, we’re going to be the moms who did the hard, invisible work of holding our families together and came out even stronger.
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