When the Prince Comes

Sunday, I found myself sprinting down the street from church to home to get the diaper bag and the Primary bag we had neglected to bring. And I was mad. I'd told my daughter to set them by the door so we wouldn't forget them. I'd glanced at the area near the front door on my way out and hadn't seen them, so I'd thought my husband had taken them with him. I'd thought, "How gallant." It was fine with me for him to carry them both and not leave one for me to tote.

However. Once there, these bags were nowhere to be found.

Our daughter is verging on teenagerism, and I should have specified which door she should have put them by.

But I wasn't mad at her. I was mad at him.

"We'll have to go back for them," I said, by which I meant, "You, the MAN, should go back for them."

He didn't pick up on that. "You have time. . ." he started to say. It was 1.5 minutes to the hour. So I sprinted.

I was probably able to run home faster than he was. I was wearing flats, and running was no problem in my shoes. I am used to running. Flying down the street in my brown skirt and tan jacket, I didn't even break a sweat. I grabbed the bags, which were set by the kitchen door, heaved them up on my shoulder (the diaper bag was suspiciously heavy, considering we don't even have a child in diapers), and ran back up the street and the 17 steps to the church without any trouble at all.

And I did get there before the meeting started.

So, why was I mad?

Paul asked where they had been and we had a brief discussion in which I said I'd thought he'd picked them both up and he said he had not seen them, either. "Are you mad?" he asked.

"Yes," I admitted. Then, as the meeting started, I reassured him by saying, "Don't worry--I'm not any madder at you than I usually am."

I continued examining my assumptions and biases. Within two minutes, I had decided to go with feeling glad that my husband considers me an equal.

Why should he necessarily be the one to go back for the bags? Because he's the man? Yes, it might be the chivalrous thing to do, but was it the most practical? I did it just as well as he could have--maybe better. In his suit coat, he would have broken a sweat. He was doing that, anyway.

I wasn't dressed in a way that made it hard. I wasn't weak or sick or pregnant. I was closer to the door. There were lots of ways to look at it practically that suggested I was actually the better candidate at the moment. Or at least just as good.

It reminded me of when it dawned on me, years ago, that men are really just people. They might be a little big bigger and stronger, but they can still be tired after work. They can still have physical issues, or down days. They aren't born with every skill, or all-knowing. They don't necessarily like to take out the trash.

I was actually surprised when my sixteen-year-old son didn't automatically know how to just go out and get a summer job.

I guess I'd heard so many stories describing my dad's confidence in his ability to do many things that I had grown up thinking men were superhuman. Dad could fix anything. He was smart about handling people. He didn't have a college education, but he could pick up his briefcase and go cold-calling on businesses and acquire customers. He ran his own business--no one told him how to. Although, my mother did have suggestions, to which he listened.

And I'd heard a lot of fairy tales. You know how fairy tales go--all your problems are over the minute the prince appears on the scene. They don't tell you that the prince shows up with his own list of problems.

I tell my daughters they can do anything they want. I believe in equal pay for equal work. I insist on fairness and equality in my relationship, as far as that is possible--at least that we each contribute to our family the best we can. We are not exactly the most traditional couple. My job has always been the more important job, and he usually does the cooking.

Yet, I don't mind at all if he is the one to stick his hand down the disposal or kill the spider.

I guess we all need to tease out for ourselves how we want to view equality and men's roles versus women's roles. We should decide what we think should just be people's roles, or adult's roles.

I think it's tricky--we grow up with certain experiences and ideas that give us biases and beliefs. Do we examine those? We should at least explore and discover them, and turn them over in our minds to see what we really would choose to believe about them. We should stretch ourselves to grow beyond stereotypes and harmful, false beliefs that we may have swallowed whole.

I knew a woman from Eastern Europe who believed herself to be completely modern, yet was really locked into caretaking roles for family members of various generations that used up time she didn't have, and who firmly believed that if her husband ever saw her once without lipstick on, it would be the end of her marriage.

I had a sister who was known as a champion for feminism--she was bright and employed, empowered and convincing, yet was often found baking cookies and cared about being pretty. Personally, I find nothing contradictory in this, and I don't think she did, either. She thought things through and decided what she wanted to think and stuck to it.

And then there are the people who will say things you know they swallowed whole and never really thought through. Like the man who told me that he had to believe men over women because they "held the priesthood." He wasn't an evil man--just uneducated and unexposed to critical thinking skills.

What do we think? And why do we think it? After turning it over and looking at it from different angles, do we want to keep thinking it, or modify it? If we're going to stand by a thought we have, shouldn't we at least know why?