PANDEMIC REFLECTIONS
I Don’t Really Want Life to Go Back to Normal
My “normal life” wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t that much fun
A little over a year ago, I found myself lying face down on our backyard lawn. I was having, for lack of a better word, a tantrum.
My husband and I were in the thick of our quarterly fight. At work, I had quarterly planning meetings; at home, I had quarterly fights. We weren’t a couple that did much daily bickering. Sure, tense words were exchanged from time to time, and temptations to slam doors were resisted, but the agitation generally dissolved without too much collateral damage.
Then, about every three months or so, it didn’t. Of course, the bickering would always start over something stupid, as marital bickering often does. This particular quarterly fight started over a leaking bathroom faucet. The faucet had been leaking for the better part of a month. Despite all my talk about gender equality, when things in our house break, I want my husband to fix them. I want him to haul out his tool box and get the job done.
My husband is capable of being handy, but he isn’t enthusiastically handy. He doesn’t rub his hands together and exclaim, “Ooh, a problem I get to solve!” He’s more likely to throw his hands in the air and…
