The Cod-tastrophe forces a mom to step up

When I was about 10 or 11, my mom and I were in JC Penney. She was writing a check when I noticed that her name was printed on it as Vera L. Hamlin; above hers was my dad’s, John L. Hamlin.

I thought to myself, “She even took his middle name?” I swore right there that I would keep my last (and middle) name if I were ever to get married. Later, I remembered that my mother’s middle name was Leoria; my dad’s was Lewis, so my righteous anger was a little misplaced. This did not deter me.

When my husband and I decided to get married, I kept my name. I didn’t have my dad “give me away” at my wedding. I support and volunteer for women’s causes and have been known to participate in a march or two. My husband does the laundry, cleans the litter boxes and does the dishes. I know how to change a tire and check my oil. For nearly 30 years, I have taken pride in the fact that we have not allowed gendered norms to define our marriage or our roles within it.

Or have we? These examples may obscure the fact that I do have some expectations of my husband just because he is a man. When I have had a flat tire or needed to put oil in my car, I ask him to do it. Then I watch and realize that he isn’t necessarily doing it right, and I know how to do both of those things. Yet, I fall into the trap of assuming it is the man’s responsibility to fix anything that breaks. In the past, I have brushed these thoughts aside, but then the cod-catastrophe, as I call it, happened.

A few days before my family and I were leaving for the beach, I purchased fresh cod for dinner. As I was checking out, the cashier told me, “You are going to have to put this in a new bag when you get home because it is leaking everywhere.” I nodded, knowing I was way too lazy to do that. When I got home, I stuck it in the fridge just as it was when I bought it.

By the time I decided to cook the cod a few days later, it had spoiled and leaked and was filling the kitchen with its rotten smell every time someone opened the refrigerator door. I cleaned out the fridge and scrubbed it twice. It still smelled. My husband told me he couldn’t smell it, but I didn’t believe him.

The next day, we were headed on vacation for a week. I hoped the smell would be gone when we returned. It was not. In fact, it had spread to the freezer. I realized that some of the liquid was trapped in one of the glass shelves, but the shelf would not come out. “What can I do,” I asked my husband. And why aren’t you doing anything about it? I kept that question to myself.

Alone in this journey, I turned to YouTube, which had the answer, but it wasn’t easy. I called on my husband to help me and wondered again why he wasn’t doing it himself. Shouldn’t he just do it and let me go back to reading my book? After following the directions for two minutes and finding ourselves unsuccessful, my husband moved on, declaring we had done all we could do.

I was convinced we hadn’t. “Why can’t he just figure it out and fix it?” I asked myself again. Then a little voice in my head responded, “Why can’t you just figure it out and fix it?” Hmmm. Good question. So that’s what I did. I rewatched several videos on YouTube, removed the shelf, cleaned it, along with some other nasty spots I discovered, put the shelf back together, and reinstalled it.

I was triumphant. My husband gave me a half-hearted “good job” after I nonchalantly informed him that I hadn’t needed his help after all.

Later, I realized there was a lesson in this experience. I can’t proclaim that responsibilities should not be determined by gender and then say something is a man’s job when I am very capable of doing it.

Now, I know there are other issues that could be debated. Yes, there are responsibilities I take on because I am the mother or woman in the family. We could also discuss the role of teamwork and helping your partner out even when you don’t want to. There are some arguments to be made on all of these points, which my husband and I discuss regularly.

Today, however, I like to think that I have grown through this experience and will be tackling that toilet in just a few weeks.