Over the years I have given lots of thought to what being a mom is all about, what the job entails and how serious the responsibility is. I have thought about what type of mom I want to be and what characteristics I need to assume that role.
Being a mother is a job that I take VERY seriously as I am responsible for forming little people into grown adults and I need to be sure that I dont mess that up.
The problem that I encounter is that its not just me, they have a Dad and I've never given much thought to the role that he plays in their formation and daily lives.
My husband works very hard to provide for our family and making sure that there is a roof over our heads and food in our bellies has always been high on his list of priorities but life aside from that is where it gets complicated for us.
We have always been in agreement that we wanted a big family and that he would work outside the home while I would be responsible for what happens inside and so aside from lugging the nasty garbage to the curb once per week its our agreement that the remainder of the upkeep and chores would be my job.
That is fine with me but the children seem to fall into a grey area. Like many men Dom leaves the house in the dark and returns in the dark, a "troll" is what he calls himself. He is up and out the door before the children are awake and they return to their beds within two hours of him getting home each night but those 120 minutes can be tricky..... There is dinner to be eaten, baths to be had, homework to be done, fights to referee, toys to be tidied and beds to be climbed into. In a perfect world this would happen smoothly and effortlessly but lets not kid around, this is NOT a perfect world and so these tasks are often combined with time outs, threats of tv loss, an occasional resraint for someones safety and generally some tears and shouts that someone is not friends with someone else - and this is considered an easy night.
This short period of time is also when the issues with Dom and I tend to surface.
I often feel like he is sitting back observing me becoming dangerously close to losing my marbles without an offer to assist and he often feels like I am so particular in how I want things done that he doesn't get involved because I will feel that he is doing things wrong or I will override his methods.
I could say that I am totally right and he could say the same thing but at the end of the day I think that there is some validity to both of our views. In all reality neither of us knows beans about Dads and what it means to be one or the description of the job. Only after Nick got sick did the relationship with my Dad begin to flourish, my adult emotions and thought process is now able to see him as human and not the fairy tale parent that I wished he was after my parents divorced. I was raised by a single mom and she was a force to be reckoned with, her motto was "if I want it done right I might as well do it myself" and that's a concept that I ran with.
Like me Dom was raised by a single mom and also had a boatload of older sisters, as the "baby" I think that perhaps he was coddled a wee bit.
No Dads in the picture means no example of what to do or even what not to do and there are times when that is problematic on both of our parts.... he doesn't know what to do and I don't know what I want him to do.
This would be a great time for kids to come with a handbook.
Our family is unique, "perfectly imperfect" and that's how I like it but the recipe for this soup requires extra helpings of responsibility, involvement and dedication and its hard to have those 100% of the time. We will solve our parenting division dilemma and life will be
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