Superwomen

What is it about being a woman that forces us to believe we could or should “tote that barge and lift that bale”? Are we stupid? Guilty? Superhuman? All of the above? That case of water, the economy-sized jug of laundry detergent, the 36-pack of sodas or beer; why don’t we just leave them in the car until someone stronger comes along? Well, you can’t leave the milk; it’ll spoil, as will the gallons of ice-cream that were on sale, the 24 pound turkey or roast… Can’t leave the water in the car because it’s in plastic and if the plastic gets heated up then the water will give you cancer. (I left a case of water in the car not too long ago, waiting for ‘someone’ to bring it inside. After a month, I gave up and returned it to the store so I wouldn’t get cancer. And yes, I carried it in myself.) Can’t leave the soda or beer cans; they’ll explode! And that’s just the big stuff. If you have an assortment of items, it means rifling though the bags to find the perishables and by that time it just isn’t worth the effort so you just take everything. Even if you just have bread and eggs and other staples, it starts to add up! Put enough plastic bags on your arms at one time and they will cut into your flesh like you wrapped them in barbed wire.

It stands to reason that we should make several trips from the car to the kitchen, so why don’t we? If you’ve been reading my posts you know that my mother turned 80 this year. She lives in a one story house and parks the car about ten feet from her front door. You would think that making several trips to unload groceries would not require a lightning bolt to the brain. And yet she persists in loading up her arms with as much as she can carry in a single trip. Do we consider it a challenge? A waste of time? A waste of energy? I chose to live in a house on a hill where it is one full flight of steps just to get to the front door. One trip up those stairs is enough to make my heart thump. Several trips in a row make it feel like it is trying to crawl out of my body through my throat on a cushion of battery acid! So minimizing the number of trips is a desirable thing, right? But not when you are laden with the groceries!

Then there are the other things we do that are just plain stupid. A friend of mine is nearly crippled because she thought it was a good idea to help her husband load his keyboards and amps into and out of vans and performance venues. There is a reason that the word “roadie” is different than the word “wife”. And yet I’ve done it too. I’ve schlepped a keyboard that weighs as much as I do from one job to another and I don’t even play! I once bought an exercise bike and inched the box out of the back of my car, lowered it to the driveway, walked it corner to corner across the path and then tilted it end over end over end up two flights of stairs to the den so I could exercise before anyone else came home! By the time anyone else came home, I had done enough exercise for a week and I hadn’t even opened the box!

And here comes winter. Ask a man to shovel the driveway and he will buy a snow blower or a truck and a plow. Ask a woman and she will break her back with the shovel. (I would love to use the snow blower but I don’t have the strength to get it out of the garage.)

So what’s wrong with us? Aside from the threat of spoiled groceries, why do women routinely overexert themselves to get things done? Perhaps it is because we can’t stand having to rely on anyone else. Perhaps it is because we don’t believe we should have to rely on anyone else. Perhaps, as physically impossible as it is to accomplish certain tasks, it is easier than waiting for someone else to do it. Perhaps it is because we can’t stand the thought of being dependent or weak. Perhaps it is because we just don’t believe that we are not invincible. We’re not, you know. I have the scars to prove it.

I hear my husband vacuuming in the other room as I write this. I feel guilty that he is cleaning while I write. I should go help him. He won’t move the sofa by himself.