The Facts:
*I got up at 5:30 a.m. so I could get all my stuff done early so that I could drive to San Francisco to take care of a series of things that needed taking care of and then drive back to the East Bay and go directly to work at the mental health rehabilitation center for six hours.
*It was the hottest day of 2020 thus far in our region, with a high of 92 degrees F, and a sun that beat down without cloud punctuation for the entire time I was working. For one of those six hours at work, I was in the shade; otherwise I was wilting under Mr. Golden Sun.
*I left work a little early (I started a little early to make this possible), as I knew my family was planning a Memorial Day barbecue. There had been no conversation about when the barbecue would happen, but at this time of year, the days are long and light until well after 8 pm. Everyone knows when I typically get home, and I assumed the festivities would have been timed to reflect that.
*When I arrived home at 4:15—and I still needed to unload my car, which was full of plants and various Horticultural Therapy paraphernalia; and take a shower, as I had been sweating all day—the picnic table outside had four things on it: undressed wilted lettuce leaves on a plate; a bowl with some corn chip crumbs; a petrifying hot dog bun; and a quarter of a white onion in a ZipLoc baggie.
*I was told that “food had been saved for me.” (Much later, I took the saved plate covered with aluminum foil out of the fridge. Somebody had gotten to it first, apparently thought it was simply stored leftovers. All that was left was a sorry-looking hot dog.)
*I showered, fed the dog and cats, watered my plants, and made myself a Trader Joe’s chicken lime burger and a suboptimal salad with the wilted lettuce. There was no olive oil left—it had been used up earlier in the day.
*There were no clean forks. I had to wash one to eat.
*As I watered my indoor plants, I mentioned to one of my sons that I would have appreciated people waiting for me to return to have the barbecue. He mansplained that Memorial Day, like other warm weather holidays, is meant to be celebrated during the day. It was bright and sunny outside while he was speaking, so I conclude that he meant the earlier part of the day, the part when I was the only person in the constellation who was working and off-site. “I’ve been prepping and cooking food all day,” he continued. “We’ve been eating for the last five hours.” Why couldn’t you have pitched the whole event a little later, I asked, so that I could have participated?
*Why are you always so grumpy? he asked.
The Analysis:
*I didn’t mind working, and doing what needed to be done in San Francisco. That attitude was re-contextualized and challenged as I understood that, after working and moving various things forward all day, I had returned home to scraps left over from others’ festivities.
*So: Am I a fool? A doormat? Or are there a set of embedded expectations here that make this possible? And might those embedded expectations be cultural in a broad sense, as well as in a family-specific sense? I believe it’s all of the above. Over the years, through certain behaviors and habits—primarily: doing more—I may have delineated what was OK to expect of me. My relationship to those expectations has changed, thanks to menopause and being diagnosed with advanced stage cancer. (Thank you, Menopause! Thank you, Advanced Stage Cancer!) I believe I’ve been clear about those changed expectations.
*Monitoring this sort of thing should not be solely my task. With the exception of one person in this cohort, everyone involved that day is technically an adult. All adult members of a group share responsibility for that group’s wellness and integrity. Any one of those adults could have noted the situation on Memorial Day and said, Hey. Let’s wait to eat, or at least hold off on some of the eating and merry-making, until Mary/Mom gets back. So whether I have historically been a fool or a doormat is irrelevant—not to mention: open for discussion—because, for crying out loud, anybody with a heart and four brain cells that touch could analyze that situation and discern that it is pretty fucked up to “save some food for me.” It clearly communicates that my company is unimportant, expendable. When it comes to holidays and festivities, it doesn’t matter if I am present or not. In many situations, that would be completely appropriate; but when the holiday celebration happens at my house, I consider it reasonable to be included. I had had a long and demanding day, and I did not want to be treated like the scullery maid. Without a clean fork. Of course, this isn’t about the food or the utensil; it’s about how hurtful it is to understand my non-essentialness, my invisibility to a group of people that I consider essential.
*The “grumpy” shit. This really gets my goat. In no way, in no universe is it my responsibility to bring it all cheerful all the time so you don’t need to reflect on your actions. I have feelings; they are varied; consider the possibility that you may have a role in precipitating those feelings. Yes, I choose my reaction to any given stimulus. Sometimes my chosen reaction will be proportionate to the bullshit going down.
*Is my analysis one-sided? By definition. Is it incomplete? Of necessity. Does it lack nuance? Yup. But there’s truth and accuracy here. Dear Reader: Is any aspect of any of this familiar to you in any way? And I don’t really mean in terms of something that happened last week or two years ago (although I mean that too). I mean: I can draw a string—one string—through these stories from way back to the now, with women expected to work hard and long; to receive a crumb as if it’s a banquet and the sum total of what they deserve; and to smile about it.