Role reversal

My life is not the way that the way it used to be. It isn’t even the way I thought it should and would be.
As a young bride my hardworking husband left for work in the wee hours of the morning while I slept on until I needed to wake-up and see the children off to school. I did not worry about medical bills, one of the benefits at my dearly beloved’s company was excellent insurance coverage for any doctor we chose and a company employed liaison who took care of filing medical reports. My days were filled with reading books to children, the family’s laundry; baking bread, cookies, pies and cakes; sewing new clothes for the children and myself, gardening, canning – and cleaning house when absolutely necessary.
With our one car needed to get my husband to work every day, I used a big wooden wagon for hauling children, library books and anything I purchased a half a mile away in the town square. It was an idyllic life – the way things were supposed to be – I even said so in a letter to my sister.
That was then. This is now.
This morning I went to work while the birds were still singing their early morning songs and my husband and kids were sound asleep. I will put in my eight hours at the News-Times developing ideas for columns, thinking ahead to stories I need to write for the next special section. Before I ever see my paycheck on Friday, a significant hunk of it will disappear into the coffers of an insurance company that wants pre-verification before treatment with a medical provider, preferable one of their choosing.
While I am gone my husband will check his e-mail for responses from companies and institutions interested in contracting him work for them. He will work with my daughter on building a desk. My daughter will also get her hair done, do a bit of shopping and maybe fix supper. My son will read, go to work, study, and wash his own clothes. While they are all at home, I am at work earning enough money to pay for the insurance, automobile upkeep and groceries.
Our lives have changed. My husband, not me, has made most of the family related phone calls regarding our daughter’s upcoming wedding. Since his plant closed last winter, he has spent three or four weeks with the youngest grandchildren while I stayed in town and went to work.
The tables have definitely been turned around here.
The tables have even been turned on our wedding preparations. The traditional mother-of-the-bride at home fussing over things with the bride while Dad is off at work has become a working mom gone to the office while the father of the bride and the bride are off shopping. When I came home one evening, he was having a jolly good time assembling odds and ends he had purchased as favors for the guests. Not wanting to miss anything, I stayed up late in order to be involved.
As a housewife, I was never bored, my list of “things to do, to make and places to go” continually replenished itself. Last week my husband echoed that sentiment when he saids, “I have so many projects to do right now that it will take me at least another six months to a year to finish them.”
The only thing that has not changed is the immortal question, “What’s for supper?”
Proving yet again, that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. She can be reached by e-mail at jhersh@ipa.net.)