On Having a Wife 👰‍♀️

an unintentional sociological experiment

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artwork by Caroline Corrigan

On March 18th, 2020, when the pandemic shut our world down, Jimmy’s office called to say they would be transitioning to work-from-home. There is a photograph of him from that time that I think of often: headset on, filled with glee at the new status quo. He would work from home for exactly one day before Rosalind was born, blasting into our lives on the first day of spring. Despite everything that came after, and how horrible the pandemic was, Jimmy never retracted this position: he loved working from home. No button down shirts, no commute, and the ability to fry up a sardine patty¹ for a cat’s lunch at any hour of the day.

thinkin’ bout sardines

For awhile, we both worked from home. We were both parenting at home with no daycare and we were both alternately glued to our computers, doing various tasks for our paid positions; Jimmy answering emails and me, trying to deliver the impossible (teaching on Zoom). We toggled relentlessly between gratitude (we were safe at home, not getting sick) and agony. But we were living through History—we couldn’t really demand something different. Anyway, the pandemic would be over in like a month anyway, right?

I fucking hate working from home. Right now, for example, I am working from home, waiting for my Zoom office hours to begin and writing a first draft of this blog. I am sitting at my desk, which is wedged between our dressers and underneath a window that leaks cold air. If I move my chair too far to the right, I’ll knock over the space heater. On my left is a stack of… materials: my daughter’s art, a printed out draft of the book I am working on, a doll my aunt crocheted whose red yarn mouth got pulled out. On top of that, though my daughter has been potty trained for almost two years, is a tube of diaper cream. On the other side of my desk is a different stack: mail I don’t have time to open, a nail file, an almost-used up lint roller, and an umbrella, which I hope is not…wet. A nearly-dead plant. Behind me, every item of clothing my family owns, clean, in a massive pile on the bed. Instead of removing them from my Zoom background, I am working on this essay. The pile is thematic to this essay. The pile represents (and literally is) an encroachment into my creativity, and a loss of personal agency. It’s just socks and shirts! But socks and shirts are their own kind of threat.

This summer, Jimmy lost his WFH job². For a few, glorious months, his only job—besides looking for a job, doing his creative work, and being a dad—was to be my wife. When I went to work, Jimmy stayed home. He picked up Rosalind every day, kept her busy and happy until I came home whenever I got around to it. I was researching things I hadn’t had the bandwidth for in five years, like grants, residencies and agents. I enrolled in a mentorship program for UDL: Universal Design for Learning. My brain fired and snapped with excitement. When I was done teaching for the day, I could sit in my office, checking off my list, editing the course site, making notes about what I might improve next semester. In the quiet of my office, removed from the keening whines of my violently annoying lapdog, away from the sink full of dirty dishes, with a desk devoid of problems that would never get solved, I had the freedom to think. And as the day geared down, I didn’t have to check my weird little IKEA clock sixty five thousand times to make sure I was home in time to relieve Jimmy… I just.. stayed. Because I had a wife.

In this essay I am using the word “wife” as defined by Judy Brady in her satirical (or is it?) essay, “I Want a Wife,” from the seminal (ovulary?) issue of Ms. Magazine, excerpted below.

She writes:

I want a wife who will take care of my physical needs. I want a wife who will keep my house clean. A wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced when need be, and who will see to it that my personal things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need it. I want a wife who cooks the meals, a wife who is a good cook. I want a wife who will plan the menus, do the necessary grocery shopping, prepare the meals, serve them pleasantly, and then do the cleaning up while I do my studying. I want a wife who will care for me when I am sick and sympathize with my pain and loss of time from school. I want a wife to go along when our family takes a vacation so that someone can continue to care for me and my children when I need a rest and change of scene.

I want a wife who will not bother me with rambling complaints about a wife’s duties³. But I want a wife who will listen to me when I feel the need to explain a rather difficult point I have come across in my course of studies. And I want a wife who will type my papers for me when I have written them…

My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?

Jimmy, for one, was pretty happy as a wife. A few weeks ago, he started a new job, an in-person job. For nine hours a day he is not at home making sardine patties, Rosalind’s lunches, our family breakfasts, dinners, or listening to me while “explain a rather difficult point I have come across in my course of studies.” He is in an office, wearing an ID badge. He did, however, find time to reply to my email when I asked him what he liked about being my wife.

“Well it mostly ruled hard. I loved doing pick-up. I loved the reception [Rosalind] gave me—her hero has arrived to release her from this fun for-profit prison she’s been in all day!”

How did he feel about being the one most responsible for cleaning?

“The desire to be noticed and complimented for housework was so powerful, I couldn’t stay quiet about it! I of course don’t do quite as much cleaning as you do. I’m more of a the surface guy, dishwasher, laundry etc. No vacuuming for me thanks… if it’s not a Dyson? I’m not touching it!”

What was it like to deal with being “unemployed?”

It felt good going to bed and not having ‘a job’ to worry about. I didn’t worry about Rozzy or you or any house stuff…it seemed so easy to me. But as far as being a wife guy….It mostly ruled. The lost of time for creative or professional pursuits was palpable but if I was just a regular ass bimbo (nothing wrong with being a BIMBO!) that didn’t care about that stuff it would super duper rule hahah. But I’m a creative ass slut who has to be making something. haha.

Unfortunately, our lot in life now is such that the one of us who loves our job (me) is also now the primary parent; the one of us who works a job just to save our family from financial ruin (Jimmy), is not home to do any of it. After the first week of our new life, Jimmy came home on Friday exhausted and resentful. I opened the door for him, exhausted and resentful. All week I’d arrived home with my child forgetting that it was me who was supposed to make dinner. All week my synapses were lengthening and creaking and blasting to accommodate the new load of information I was responsible for, and at the end of the day, I was unable to turn it off. I slammed a frozen pizza in the oven and chastised Jimmy for leaving his boots in a pile by the door, after tripping over them trying to get to the freezer. We glared and seethed. Instantly I thought: this is why people get divorced.

“This is why people get divorced,” I said aloud, and Jimmy nodded emphatically. In this new world, nothing was set up to support us. In this new world, dinner would no longer be soups or stews or salads or anything that required use of, say, a knife. In this new world we’d both collapse onto the couch on Friday to dissolve into the fantasy world of The Great British Bakeoff, watching as much for the delightful personalities as for the dream of someone else doing your dishes.

It is embarrassing to be mad at your life. I know that. Things could be so much worse! I know that too! You might be reading this like, bitch, this is how the rest of us have been living. I am so sorry! This is not ok!

I have been writing Mom Blog for four years and I have to say that the most mentally incapable of writing I’ve been was not from sleepless nights, pandemic terror, relentless daycare sickness, finals week, or anything else like that. No, the biggest barrier to my creative work is being the primary parent. The… wife.

In a strange twist of fate, the only reason this essay is getting done today is because Rosalind is home sick. Last night, I lay in her room next to her, stroking her back and wiping her face after she vomited again and again. Each time a new serving of orange puke presented itself, Jimmy met me at the doorway to catch the barf jammies and run them down to the washing machine. I remember thinking: I’m glad this is happening at night, when we can work together.

Today, winter sunshine streaming in, Rosalind and I sit on the couch together watching Shaun the Sheep. I cancelled my work-adjacent plans for the day, am ignoring the massive stack of grading (would not be fair to the students to receive feedback under my current working conditions) but you, dear reader, will understand. You are used to working under these conditions.

Thanks for reading Mom Blog.

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See you in January,

xo,

Olivia

1. Email me if you want Jimmy’s sardine patty recipe

2. Jimmy’s edit: “I prefer strategic self-imposed exile”

3. Jimmy’s edit: “this is almost an impossible task for us WIVES”