Domesticity

Get home, stare at the house for a few minutes, maybe eat a slice of cheese, start busying myself. Get wood and start a fire. Put away any clean dishes, wash any dirty ones. Prep dinner, while simultaneously deciding whether or not there are enough dirty clothes to warrant a load of laundry. Fold and put away any clean laundry to the soundtrack of my current fav Netflix show or hip hop album. Make sure dinner isn't burning. Check the mail for bills, pay the bills. Have dinner hot and ready for when Nick comes home, even though he constantly insists that I should just eat without him if he is working late.

That's a pretty typical weekday evening for me. I never thought I would fall into such a domestic routine, but I did almost immediately after I moved in with Nick over 3 years ago. Even though we had both previously been fully functional adults capable of taking care of all aspects of our own lives, we started to shift without being conscious of it. Small things like, Nick worked later hours, so I was usually home earlier and had more time to get dinner started, therefore I cooked dinner more often than him, despite his love of and talent for cooking. 

Nick impressed me with how clean he kept his house when we started dating, as I have lived with boys before and that is not always the case. I didn't feel the need to take over the weekly cleaning responsibilities, it just sort of happened. My lifestyle lends me more free time than him, especially in the summer when he is usually working 10-14 hours a day, 5-7 days a week. This means I have more time to devote to keeping the house tidy and clean. If I left it for other things, Nick would pick up the slack, it just might take him longer to get to it. Same would be said about many of the outside chores that he takes on. I can mow the lawn, rake the leaves, and (probably) build a fence, but it would take me a lot longer to get to it because I prioritize my chores inside.

I ask Nick to deal with spiders, I usually do most of the laundry. He mows the lawn, I water the flowers. I vacuum more, he cleans the gutters. None of this is hard and fast, we don't have chore lists or assigned duties, we just get stuff done when we know it needs to be done. Sometimes I get firewood and sometimes Nick cleans the bathroom.

Things that have traditionally (and by traditionally, I mean back when we were taught we didn't have a choice) been classified as female or male gender roles sort of made their way to the forefront of our shared life together without either of us bringing it up. I never studied anthropology, but I imagine these instincts come from way back. I am a woman, a gatherer, nurturer, nester. On weekends, Nick is more inclined to spend a day in his shop, or outside working on the yard. I am more often found inside, meal prepping, cleaning,  re-organizing the closets, or just enjoying my home.

The thing I love about our relationship is that neither of us expects these things from each other. I don't expect that Nick will be the one to take out the garbage, and he doesn't expect that his laundry "magically" ends up nicely folded back in his drawers. We are a team. We communicate about what needs to be done around the house/property, and we ask each other to help.

I am so grateful that I was born into a generation where I was not expected to prepare dinner in heels and pearls while my husband sat in the living room reading the paper and then didn't even help with the dishes. I know it wasn't like that everywhere or all the time, but it seemed a lot more common for women then than it does today. I am so grateful to have a partner who is a strong supporter of women's rights and choices and who never expects anything from me just because of my gender.

It is funny though, that despite all that, we have found ourselves where we are now. It must say something about the way we are wired or more technically how we have developed anthropologically. The same as I am grateful that I am not expected to do certain things, I am grateful that I have the choice to perform those things anyways. I like making dinner for my hard working partner and having something hot ready for him to come home to. I like baking. I like re-organizing the house (maybe a little too much). I can't say I wear heels too often but I do own them, and pearls. Sometimes they are fun! 

These are really observations more than anything. I am mostly just grateful that I get to exist in a world that seems to be making progress in recognizing that "male" and "female" duties and activities don't need to exist anymore, that our genders are a spectrum and every day we can express ourselves differently. It makes me excited to be a parent someday and not require my children to exhibit any particular set of characteristics that make them masculine or feminine, they can just be free.