Enabler extraordinaire
My name is Banji, and I am an enabler.
Does it make it better if I am honest about it? I have enabled Husband #1 to never have to do anything around the house. Okay, 98 percent of things around the house. He sometimes empties the dishwasher, but since we had to get a new one, he is afraid of it. Honestly, so am I, but that is another story. Why does my dishwasher have wifi? Is it dating someone in the neighborhood and it needs to text them? Is it on Instagram?
Wait, is my dishwasher posting pictures of how poorly I load it? Food remnants? Is it in competition with other dishwasher Instagram celebrities? What is this world coming to?
Sorry, I got off topic. Back to Husband #1. Appliances having wifi capability when I still can’t remember my Apple I.D. or password is a whole other column, possibly even for next week since we are getting new phones…. In any event, I continue to digress.
Since we moved into our house, almost 28 years ago, I have been the shoveler of snow. Yes, I know I have three sons, but I have enabled them as well. If they were inside, getting along, watching sports or playing video games together, I was not upsetting the good vibes. It is every mother’s dream to have her children play nicely together. So I was outside shoveling. After all, it is really good exercise.
This past storm was a tough one, I have to admit. Camp Babka was in session, and the snow was coming down fast and furious. Being the good wife that I am, every two hours I would go outside and shovel the steps, the walkway, the sidewalk, and the entrance to the driveway that had been plowed in. Every two hours.
“Babka, why are you going outside again?” my innocent campers would ask. “Because Babka doesn’t want Papa to slip and fall,” I would reply. Four years ago was when Husband #1 took a bad spill on the ice and needed a subsequent brain procedure, but we won’t go into that again. (And it wasn’t because of my shoveling.)
Well, folks, this was the first time that being such a good wife and such a good shoveler ended up biting me in the bedonkadonk.
You know how on that Monday, when all the schools were closed? When husbands and wives stayed home from work because of all the snow and the condition of the roads? When I was still running Camp Babka with two adorable campers, one of whom likes waking up very early in the morning and neither of whom had appropriate snow clothes, so it was going to be another day inside building magnatile zoos, playing with train tracks, and doing arts and crafts? (Every moment of which I am eternally grateful for and wouldn’t change a single thing and will take them any time their parents want to give them to me…for the record.)
And how nice this was all going to be because Papa was home from work? Well, he wasn’t. I shoveled such a clear and beautiful path for him out of the driveway that he got to work safe and sound. The only one in the office. What an ambitious, hard-working husband I have. I am so lucky.
Yup, that’s what I am.
Okay, I am exaggerating a little bit. He was home for a few hours, and then he went to work. But what is my column if not poking fun at the man who has chosen to live his life with a crazy person? Granted, I am a crazy person who does all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning, but still. A little nuts never hurt anyone. Unless, of course, you are allergic to nuts.
At Camp Babka, we took advantage of all the snow. When the younger camper went in for her nap, the older camper and I did an experiment with snow and finger paint. It didn’t turn out quite like we thought, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless, and the house was spotless when Papa came home from work. … Because I am that kind of wife.
How was your snow day?
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck has a husband who would like to write a formal rebuttal to this particular column, but he probably never will because that is the kind of husband he is.
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