My husband and I do chores separately. I clean the hot tub and water the flowers; my husband weeds. I vacuum and clean toilets; my husband does his own laundry and cooks dinner.
Although this system works, I sometimes feel lonely. Wouldn’t it be fun to squirt my husband with the hose while I water? Wouldn’t I like to add sage and rosemary to the pork loin he’s cooking? I feel like our arrangement is a microcosm of our lives together—equal but separate.
A couple of times, however, we’ve broken out of this mold. When we were remodeling our bathroom, we traveled to Home Depot and got stoned on the way. In the store we were like two kids in a candy shop, giggling and acting ridiculous. Our contractor scolded us for buying tiles that were too intricate, but, boy, was it fun.
Even more wonderful was when we searched for our kids’ trampoline. We live in a windy spot, and one day the wind blew the trampoline away. Neighbors would stop by to report sightings—in this field, down that highway, by someone’s horse corral. My husband and I would drive for miles, straining to catch a glimpse of the aluminum monster among the wheat and grazing cows. Our searches always proved fruitless, yet we kept looking, together.
S.C.
Dillon, Montana
The salesman was very persuasive. The vacuum cleaner was the fancy type advertised on TV—a canister on wheels with a long hose and a suction wand.
I was twenty and living in my first apartment, across town from my parents. Rent was $127.50 a month. The vacuum cost ten times that.
I listened as the salesman demonstrated all its features, assuring me that if I changed my mind about purchasing it, there was a three-day grace period. I was all too aware of the slipperiness of his pitch, but I signed the contract anyway.
The next day I went to my parents’ house for dinner. As we ate, I bragged about my new purchase.
“You paid how much?” my dad asked. “What’s your take-home pay?”
He took an envelope off the counter and started calculating. My secretarial job paid less than $500 a month. He asked about rent, utilities, bus fare, and gas. I was paying off a couch that I’d bought to help establish a credit rating, so I gave him that figure too.
He put down his pen. “Looks like you bought your mom a new vacuum, because you’ll have to move home to afford it.”
“No!” I said.
“Then call the guy and tell him you changed your mind.”
I called as soon as I got home. Next I vacuumed everything in sight: the floors, the couch, my one upholstered chair, the drapes, even the walls. I discovered I hated dragging around that canister.
So I wouldn’t back down, my dad made sure to be there when the salesman came over the next evening. The man tried to convince my father the vacuum was a good deal: “It’s the last one she’ll ever have to buy.”
“Her salary barely covers rent and groceries,” my dad said.
Seeing he was beaten, the salesman voided the contract and packed up the vacuum.
The next weekend my mom took me to a store where my cousin worked reconditioning used vacuums. For seventy-five dollars I walked away with a used Kirby upright that would serve me well for the next thirteen years—until another salesman rang my bell to offer a more attractive deal
Marili Reilly
Portland, Oregon
Dishwashing became my chore when I was young. My mother and sisters didn’t consider me trainable in the culinary arts, so my mom stood me at the sink, handed me a soapy sponge, and showed me what to do.
It soon dawned on me that I had been given a cushy job. While meal preparation was complex, washing dishes was simple. And I was perceived as a savior. My mother loved that she could put her feet up after dinner. The sink was in the corner, so my family couldn’t see my blissful smiles as I played with the suds. Later, as a teen, I was awarded the adolescent’s highest honor: being left alone.
It was only when I moved into my first apartment that things changed. Now the dishes were dirty because I had made them so. I’d become both the chore creator and the chore doer, and my family wasn’t there to appreciate my work.
Now that I’m married, I no longer decorate my face with a bubble beard or admire the sudsy “muscles” on my arms while washing dishes. Instead my wife and I take turns loading and unloading the dishwasher. It’s only during a power outage or when the machine is full after a big party that we can be found at the sink together, dancing the plates and glasses through the water.
Jalil Buechel
Ithaca, New York
I was twenty-two and without much direction in life when a friend invited me to help out on her goat farm in Half Moon Bay, California. I could live in a cabin on the property in exchange for milking the goats.
In the early mornings, before the sun crested the hills, I walked to the milking shed, the bright smell of eucalyptus on the air. The goats were already bleating, eager to have their udders drained. I gathered tin pails from the musty barn, spread alfalfa in the goats’ trough, and pulled a stool alongside their fragrant, furry bodies. Squeezing rhythmically, I heard the milk spraying against the bottom of the pail. A fine mist settled on my hands, and the heat radiating from the goats warmed me. Carefully carrying the full buckets to the house, I watched the dew steam off the roofs.
Fifteen years later I work in an office. Recently I realized I miss doing morning chores and watching the day begin, so I bought some chickens to keep in my backyard. Each morning, stumbling half asleep in my underwear, I fill their feeder and listen to them cluck. I have not been disappointed.
Martin Box
Silverton, Oregon
Earlier this summer my husband had to take out a wasp’s nest from beneath a bench on our deck. He waited until most of the wasps were out of the nest, then swatted it away with a yardstick. The displaced insects buzzed about in confusion for a while before flying away, presumably to do their business elsewhere.
Shortly after that, I noticed two wasps on the exterior of a living room window screen. They stood with their heads close, gently rubbing their antennae together and occasionally lifting their front legs to touch each other’s faces. I watched them make these intimate gestures most of the afternoon. The next morning I found them snuggled together at the top corner of the window.
There they have remained for months. It appears that, with no nest to tend, they have chosen to tend each other.
Every morning the wasps groom one another carefully, stroking each wing from end to end. When this ritual is completed, they poke about the window, clearing away debris or spider webs. Occasionally one of them leaves but soon enough comes back, approaching its companion to be inspected, the way our dog inspects my husband and me when we come home.
All day the insects are busy in their corner. I feel guilty for robbing them of their nest, but watching them fill the void with a new purpose has been an unexpected grace.
Tutt Stapp-McKiernan
Castleton, Virginia
When I was fourteen, I was as-signed an endless list of chores. My two younger sisters had tasks to do as well, but they didn’t seem to be held to the same standard as I was. My older brother was the luckiest of all: His only jobs were to take care of the lawn, shovel snow, and occasionally wash the car. These seasonal tasks were a pittance compared to the everyday grind of laundry, ironing, cleaning, and dishes.
The wife of a Methodist minister, my mother was expected to serve the congregation as much as he did. There was a constant stream of meetings to attend, prayer groups to lead, hymns to select, and phone calls to make. She was also in charge of our family’s finances, planning and cooking meals, and other household work. Though I recognized the heavy load she carried, that didn’t stop me from complaining about doing my share.
After a particularly contentious week, Mom hung little signs all over the house: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” on the cleaning-supply cabinet; “This is the day which the Lord hath made. Rejoice and be glad in it” on a kitchen cupboard. And the one that annoyed me the most: “Work is love made visible” on the washing machine. I could think of many more pleasant ways to show love.
Years later Mom and I got to talking about those signs, and I told her how much I’d resented them. With a sheepish smile, she said, “Oh, sweetie, those signs were reminders for me, not for you.”
Joan Hamilton
Vancouver, Washington
Sixty apartments. One hundred fifty-three tenants. Only six washers and six dryers, and at least one of each is broken. Also one dryer always leaves your clothes wet, while another turns them into shriveled husks.
Making the descent to the basement, you steel yourself for the struggle ahead. In the laundry room all the washers are full and churning. Thirty-seven minutes a wash. You slump into one of the two hard plastic chairs beside the clothes-folding table and wait. Leaving and coming back is not an option. Someone will snatch those machines the second they’re available—probably sour-faced Danice, who must be housing a small village in her apartment with how much laundry she does.
You half listen to a podcast while watching the washer’s timer tick down: five, four, three, two, one, one, one, zero. No one arrives to remove the laundry from the machine. Why can’t people just set an alarm on their phones?
So you wait. Ten minutes go by. You could remove the laundry yourself, but you dread the altercation to come if someone were to catch you in the act of touching their clothes. You decide to give them until the next podcast commercial break.
When the host’s voice is replaced by an advertisement for online therapy, you bolt to the washer, yank out the clothes like a robber who just cracked a safe, and heave your laundry inside. You insert your wash card only to find there isn’t enough credit on it. Frantically searching your wallet, you pull out single after single, all useless: Although it costs $1.75 per wash, the machine inexplicably only takes fives. Finally you spy Abe Lincoln’s chiseled jawline and coax the bill into the slot.
You punch start on the washer and flee the scene like a hit-and-run driver. As you exit, the door on the far side of the basement opens, and you hear, “Aw, hell no, who touched my—” The door slams shut behind you. Crisis averted.
Thirty-seven minutes later you return just as the washer winds down to zero (because you set an alarm on your phone). There is one dryer open, and it’s not the one that doesn’t dry.
As you empty your washing into a basket, Danice enters with a hulking cart full of clothes and parks it beside the open dryer. Then she begins to pull wet clothes from her cart and put them into the dryer.
You check the other dryers. Twenty minutes.
And so you wait.
J.A. Smith
Brooklyn, New York
When my mother married George, my siblings and I watched as she walked herself down the aisle in the courthouse to the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.” George had a four-acre strawberry farm, a big beard, and a big heart. I often wondered what he saw in my mother, a burned-out poet with three teenage kids, two divorces, and a drinking problem.
We moved into George’s house, and my mother began to realize that farming was nothing like a Beatles song. The work was staggering, and George couldn’t afford much help, so we all had to pitch in.
We learned to stretch foul-smelling plastic over the rows of soil and cut holes where the plants would go. Then came watering and weeding. When the strawberries were ripe, the chores doubled. To pick the fruit, you had to pinch the stem at just the right spot to ensure more would grow. It was backbreaking work. We spent Friday nights in our unair-conditioned living room, packing strawberries for Saturday’s market. As I piled those evil red berries into boxes, I’d think up ways to exact my revenge.
George realized at some point that things were not going to work out. His wife had started drinking again, and his stepkids were revolting. He tried to be a dad to us, but he couldn’t compete with our real dad, who lived in a beautiful house and would never have made us work long hours on a farm. The marriage and the strawberry business both fizzled out.
George now lives with his new wife on a different farm. He is dying of cancer. Despite my teenage hatred of farmwork, he did instill in me a love of growing my own food. I miss his laugh and the way he would touch the plants with his knowing hands. Every time I hear “Strawberry Fields Forever,” I think of him.
D.H.
Honolulu, Hawaii
For my eight siblings and me summer vacation meant waking every day to a list of chores devised by our dad. While the neighbor kids were out running around, we were stuck in the house, working. We felt cheated.
Once a week one of our tasks was an all-day event: We had to walk to the library—two miles each way—and participate in the Billy the Bookworm Club, where we gave reports on books we’d read.
What started as a chore led to three of Dad’s children becoming authors.
J.M.
St. Paul, Minnesota
“Goodbye, Wags!” Mom’s exasperated voice rang out from the kitchen.
Gathered in front of the TV, my siblings and I glanced at each other guiltily. Then my sister jumped up from the couch to feed Wags.
It had been a couple of months since the brown mutt had followed my oldest brother home from school. When no one claimed her, our parents made us a deal: if the four of us agreed to walk her, feed her, and clean up after her, she was ours.
We all fell in love with Wags. She was the pet we’d been waiting for. The lives of our cats had been cut short due to illness and misadventure, and we’d had to give away Patches the terrier, who’d turned out to be too aggressive. Now providence had led Wags to us. So, naturally, we swore we’d do all those tasks.
At first, taking care of her didn’t feel like work. We laughed when Wags danced as we opened her bag of food. We proudly walked her around the block, eager to show her off to the neighbors. But as the newness wore off, we became derelict in our duties. Mom reminded us of our deal, intimating that maybe we wouldn’t be able to keep Wags if we didn’t hold up our end. None of us took her seriously. We knew she loved Wags as much as we did—which is why it was so jarring to hear her holler, “Goodbye, Wags!” like she actually meant it. For the next couple of weeks we were back to our chores with renewed commitment.
From then on, whenever we slacked off, “Goodbye, Wags!” resounded through the house, and up we’d jump. Over time, however, we started to suspect once more that this threat was an act. We confronted Mom: Could she really consider getting rid of Wags? She blushed and turned away.
“Goodbye, Wags!” had lost its power. Eventually it morphed into a family joke: Mom would yell it from the kitchen when it was time to do our chores, and we’d echo it back. Then we’d pat the dog and wait for the next commercial break, secure in the knowledge that Wags wasn’t going anywhere.
Scott Fleming
Eugene, Oregon
I use the state of my bedroom to track my depressive episodes. When the piles of clothes and dishes get too high, I know I need a change.
In the winter of 2022 my room was the messiest it had ever been. Wine bottles, take-out containers, dirty laundry, and half-empty glasses of water surrounded my bed. I filled trash bags with the month’s detritus and hauled my laundry to the washing machine. In the kitchen I scrubbed the residue off bowls and cups. As my room became less cluttered, I slowly found the energy to reenter life.
When a friend who was struggling with depression asked me to help them clean their room, I enthusiastically said yes. I longed to rely on others like that, but my deep shame made it difficult to ask for help.
Though I haven’t found the courage to ask someone to clean with me, I have begun to FaceTime with friends and loved ones as I do it myself. Instead of being a chore, picking up has become a time of connection. No one should have to clean their depression room by themselves.
E.G.
Charlotte, North Carolina
When I was a child, my father taught elementary school and picked up part-time jobs. He did not want my mother to work outside the home, perhaps because he did not want to watch the children. He didn’t talk to us kids, just yelled at us to be quiet. When he wasn’t working, he fixed cars, leaving all of the shopping, cooking, cleaning, bill paying, and other household work to my exhausted mother.
After my mother gave birth to her sixth baby, she made a list of chores, assigned points to each one, titled the chart “Kid of the Month,” and tacked it to the kitchen wall. I had three older sisters, all more clever and capable than I was, and one of them always won Kid of the Month. The prize was to spend the afternoon with the parent of your choice. My sisters always chose my mother.
One month, determined to finally win, I folded the laundry the way my mother had taught me—diapers and towels in halves, then thirds. I cleaned the bathroom. I rushed to set the table for dinner and jumped up to clear it. I stood on a kitchen chair afterward to wash the dishes. One of my sisters taunted me, singing, “Lukewarm water! No more soap! Mary is a big, fat dope!” I blinked back tears and tried to splash dishwater into her mouth.
Finally my mother announced that I had won Kid of the Month. In a move that stunned even me, I chose my father for my prize.
I worried all week that he would stand me up, but that Sunday afternoon, a fall day, I put on my favorite hand-me-down green cardigan sweater, and he drove me to a park, where he rented a boat and rowed me around the lake. I spread peanut butter on saltines and handed them to him to eat. I can’t remember what we talked about, what little-girl thoughts I’d been so eager to share with him. But I remember how different the experience was from sitting in the car while he drove, staring at the back of his balding head. He was looking right at me, his fourth daughter, Kid of the Month, the one who’d chosen him.
Mary Cowhey
Florence, Massachusetts
The livestock auctioneer agreed to separate the eight-hour-old calf from its mother. The man who wanted to buy the mother smiled, but my stomach dropped as I looked at my brother Dalton’s troubled face. Everyone knew a baby separated from its mom wouldn’t live without special care. As kids, Dalton and I were naive enough to tackle the lost cause. He yelled a bid for the baby cow, and the men around us sighed at our soft hearts.
Thus Dalton and I took on the hardest chore we’d ever done: keeping Kory the cow alive. We bought heat lamps, colostrum formula, and wood shavings for her bed. We took turns watching her throughout the night and made countless calls to vets and other farmers for advice. We learned to funnel milk into her stomach and eventually taught her to drink from a bottle.
There were many times I understood why the other farmers hadn’t wanted the calf, but as she grew, I began to form an unbreakable bond with Kory the cow-dog. Dalton and I fed her doughnuts, which she chased us to get, taught her to walk without a lead rope, and fell asleep by her side on many nights. We’d taken a chance on an emotional and physical ordeal, and we’d ended up with the best part of my childhood.
E.S.
Nashville, Tennessee
Growing up in a house of ten people—two grandparents, one aunt, one cousin, two parents, three siblings, and me—meant constant mess and noise: Grandma cooking in the kitchen while watching soap operas. Parents who were too busy to clean. Five kids who didn’t want to clean at all. The worst of the clutter was confined to our respective living spaces, but over the years, as Grandpa became weaker and was no longer able to get up the stairs, we turned the dining room into a bedroom for him, and his medical supplies became fixtures throughout the house, from the insulin in the fridge to the toilet chair in the bathroom.
We cared for him with patience and love. I’d grab a basin for him to spit into when he couldn’t keep food down. I’d flush his feeding tube, suction secretions from his nose, and help him to the bathroom. I’d doze off as I pressed gauze to a bleeding dialysis fistula in the middle of the night.
He died in April 2021. Soon after, my immediate family and I moved into our own house. I instantly noticed how clean and quiet it was. We had a couch instead of a hospital bed and sparkling countertops instead of the disarray of my grandma’s cooking. The hum of Grandpa’s oxygen machine was replaced by the trickling of a fountain. It made me sick to my stomach with grief. I’d never wanted to see a mess so badly in my life.
Lauren Jakosalem
Macomb, Michigan
I wet the bed most nights during elementary school. Filled with shame and sadness in the morning, I would pull the soaked, stinking bedding back to let it air-dry. My mom had four young kids, and washing my sheets every day wasn’t her first priority. At night I’d often sleep on the dirty ones.
Once I hit puberty, the bed-wetting stopped. For a while I relished straightening my clean sheets each morning. By my mid-teens, however, I couldn’t be bothered. More-important issues filled my head: boys, friends, clothes. I’d spend my mornings trying on outfit after outfit and discarding the rejects on my unmade bed. At night I’d shove the pile onto the floor so I could sleep.
When I became a wife at the age of eighteen, I played the part with great seriousness. Making the bed in our tiny trailer was one of many chores I completed each day—mostly, I think, to affirm that I was a capable adult.
Decades after the end of that marriage, my current husband and I sleep in separate beds. (We both snore.) The only chore I’m certain to do every day is make my bed. The choice to smooth my sheets and neatly arrange the pillows each morning is just for me. I enjoy seeing the pristine covers when I come into the room throughout the day, and I relish pulling back the clean bedding at night and tucking myself in. Making my bed is an act of self-love, both for the woman I am now and for that little girl who slept on dirty sheets
Carrie Thiel
Helena, Montana
Cleaning the house. Washing the dishes. Doing the laundry. Shopping for groceries. Some days the list can feel endless.
A friend offers a different perspective. She has decided to replace “I have to . . .” with “I get to . . .” So rather than saying, “I have to clean the house,” she says, “I get to clean the house.” This helps her remember that many people are unhoused and would very much like to have a home to clean. Saying, “I get to go grocery shopping,” reminds her how lucky she is to have access to stores and the financial resources to feed her family. “Getting” to cut the grass or stain the deck lets her appreciate her physical ability to do these jobs.
Following her example, I am trying to frame chores as privileges rather than tasks I am forced to do. I sometimes still complain about them, though.
Constance Matthews
State College, Pennsylvania
I’d thought one of the joys of living in Barcelona would be strolling to my neighborhood market and choosing from delectable produce, fish, and cheese. I tried to hold on to this romantic image as I walked to the Mercado de Santa Caterina, maneuvering through the crowded streets like a pinball, darting around old women who stopped every few feet to talk, and flattening myself against a wall whenever a truck passed by.
Once I reached the market, the real work began. The stalls were specialized. Some sold only pork or dried cod, others just potatoes or bananas. Buying five items could require standing in five different lines—Catalan lines, which I had discovered operated differently than lines in America. The first time I’d gone to the market, I’d started to place my order immediately after the woman in front of me was finished. Suddenly the other customers were pointing at me and shouting. That’s how I learned the local etiquette: When you walk up to a group of people waiting to order, you ask, “Who’s the last one?” then take your turn after that person. The experience was my first indication that shopping at the market wouldn’t be as magical as I had anticipated.
I also learned, to my dismay, that the beautiful fruit on display wasn’t necessarily what I would be given. I’d arrive home to find that my fruit was bruised or beyond ripe. The vendors knew I was a foreigner and might have figured I wouldn’t be coming back.
Then there were the times when, after climbing the stairs to my sixth-floor apartment, I’d discover I had forgotten to buy a needed item. Back downstairs I went, making my way yet again through the narrow streets and meandering crowds. As I walked up the 109 steps to my apartment for the second time in an hour, I would inevitably start dreaming of a supermarket like the one I’d gone to in Los Angeles while visiting my mother. The wide aisles were filled with everything I wanted—fruit, vegetables, bread, pastries—all waiting to be put in a shopping cart and wheeled to the checkout. Then I could just stroll out the door and drive home.
Miriam Applebaum
New York, New York
As a child I spent Sunday afternoons doing my family’s laundry. My grandma, who’d grown up in rural China in the early 1900s, taught me how to add soap powder to the washer’s tub, fill the tub three-quarters full with water, then turn the machine off. Next I had to add my dad’s greasy, sweat-stained shirts from the restaurant kitchen; my mom’s dusty dresses from the garment factory; my sister’s and my shorts, soiled from playing in the city streets; my toddler brother’s food-caked tops; and my infant sister’s sour-smelling onesies. My grandma washed her own clothes separately, along with the baby’s cloth diapers, for which I was grateful.
I had to stand on a stool to push the dirty laundry into the tub. Then I turned the washer back on and started the cycle. Since we didn’t own a dryer, my next chore was to hang up each item to dry. I used the stool to reach the wire hangers dangling from broomsticks tied to the basement rafters. My grandma often helped, retrieving the hangers and putting them back on the broomsticks after I’d draped them with wet garments. We moved quickly and efficiently so I could return to my real job: homework.
In my immigrant family the kids were drilled to do well in school so we could get into good colleges and ultimately have good careers. Everyone in the household had a hand in this mission. By taking care of my siblings and me, my grandma allowed my parents to work full-time so they could put food in our mouths and a roof over our heads. This stability permitted my siblings and me to worry about nothing but school.
Over the years we moved through a series of houses, each a little bigger than the last and with more amenities—even a dryer. And each of us kids completed our family’s most important chore: graduating from college.
Judy Chow
Medford, New Jersey
When I was growing up, my dad would constantly ask my brother and me to do things he could do himself. He’d call me out of my bedroom to hand him a box of tissues or the remote. One time he made me wait while he clipped his nails so I could take the clippings away.
The worst was when he settled in front of the TV and started asking me to bring him beers. Once, I brought him two to save myself a trip, but he told me to put one back so it wouldn’t get warm.
“The way you drink,” I said, “it won’t have time to get warm.”
“Just put it back.”
Ten minutes later he asked me to grab him another beer. Goddamn it, I thought. Why should my Goosebumps reading get interrupted every few pages just because he’s so lazy?
Finally I’d had enough. I vigorously shook my dad’s beer before strolling to the living room and handing it to him. When he cracked it open, a geyser of foam erupted into his lap.
“Did you drop it?” he asked.
“No,” I said solemnly. “I bet the pressure from the drive up the mountain did it. Like the way the bags of chips blow up by the time we get them home.”
My dad went to the fridge and opened another beer. “Funny: the pressure didn’t affect this one,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later he called for a beer. Once again I shook the can and brought it to him. He held it out and told me to put my nose on it.
I could have said, You got me! but I wasn’t brave enough to fess up. I put my nose on the can, my dad opened it, and beer sprayed into my face and hair.
I never shook a can of beer again. The old man may have been lazy, but he was clever.
I wasn’t as enterprising as my little brother, Billy, who fetched beers eagerly. He’d always crush the empty cans and trade them for cash at the recycling center. Billy even salvaged a piece of lumber from one of our dad’s construction jobs, nailed another piece of wood to it for a handle, and drew an angry face on it. He called it Smashy and used it to flatten four cans at once. A few times I tried to crush some cans myself and get Billy to split the money with me, but he refused. “I’m the can man around here,” he’d say.
My dad passed away four years ago. I think of him every time I get myself a drink. I could ask my kids to do it, but I don’t know if they’re the kind who would shake a can, and I’m not about to find out.
Jenny Russell
Tucson, Arizona
Our daughter wanted a pet for her sixth birthday. I frowned at the prospect of more responsibility but knew my husband, Tomer, would indulge her, so I insisted on a low- maintenance animal. We settled on a betta fish, and Tomer promised to oversee the feeding and bowl cleaning.
I placed Bubbles the betta on the kitchen countertop and watched him dart around the bowl while I loaded the dishwasher. On several occasions I spied him floating sideways beneath a layer of foamy residue, only to find him miraculously recovered hours later, the water clear again.
Eventually Tomer came clean: He’d been rushing to the pet store to buy a replacement whenever he found the fish afloat.
It was clear we could not keep a fish alive. Though Tomer had been managing the feeding and cleaning as promised, he traveled for work regularly, and I resented the extra tasks during his absence. One evening I insisted he stop the pet-store purchases.
“But I hate to see our daughter cry,” he said.
I assured him she would be fine. The sole benefit of a pet fish, it seemed to me, was that its death would provide a gentle introduction to grief and loss. Tomer frowned but agreed to let the next death be the last.
After dinner one night I glanced at the bowl. Bubbles wasn’t moving. I texted Tomer from the kitchen: I think the fish is dead.
He replied, U killed him.
I knew he was kidding, but I felt guilty anyway.
Later that night, while I scrubbed the kitchen sink, my eyes settled upon the now-empty fishbowl in search of a shimmer of tail. I’d been so busy trying to reduce my weekly workload, I’d failed to enjoy Bubbles’ lively presence.
Jen Gilman Porat
Delray Beach, Florida
It’s ten o’clock on a Friday morning in July, and twenty minutes ago I finished mowing my lawn. I had to get an early start, as we’re in the grip of a heinous heat wave. I’ve gulped some cold water and am now splayed on the bed, the ceiling fan spinning lazily above me, its breeze against my skin like a narcotic. My wife is out, and our geriatric dog is beating the heat by napping on the kitchen’s tile floor.
There are several other distasteful tasks I must accomplish today, and the compressor of my ancient air-conditioning system could expire at any moment. But right now it’s a Friday morning, and I am blissfully relaxing on my bed in a cool, quiet house. I don’t know much, but I’m smart enough to realize this is a glimpse of heaven.
Tom Walsh
Rockford, Illinois
I was seven years old when my maternal grandmother came to live with us on our family farm. While our mother was at work and Dad was planting or harvesting the crops, Grandma Inga padded around our house in her sensible shoes, picking up dust bunnies and preparing casseroles in our cramped kitchen. She also took charge of our half-acre garden.
My siblings and I were expected to help her weed and thin the rows of lettuce, radishes, carrots, spinach, and pole beans. Other chores we performed independently—managing a flock of ducks, mucking the pig stalls, mowing the lawn—but in the garden we worked under Inga’s watchful eye. She was meticulous. God forbid we pull a fledgling potato plant from the ground rather than a weed. What made the work a real chore was Inga’s insistence that we do it standing up: Plant our feet wide, bend at the waist, uproot the intruder, then repeat ad infinitum.
Her rationale for imposing this discipline on us—and on me in particular, since I was a chunky lad—was that it would tone the belly. One might get the job done while kneeling or sitting, but it was an inferior form of exercise.
The lesson stuck. I’m now ten years older than Inga was when she arrived on our doorstep. Whenever I bend to pull a strand of creeping Charlie away from my daylilies, I silently thank her for a firmer waistline.
Michael Schuler
Madison, Wisconsin
“Work before play” was my family’s motto. On Saturday mornings there were chores to do before I could swim in the pool or ride my bike. I was in charge of cleaning the bathroom and dusting all the surfaces in our home, including the maze of knotty-pine shelves that ran the length of the basement rec room. When I was eight, I wasn’t allowed to attend a bicycle-safety class with my friends because I hadn’t cleaned the toilet. I argued it could wait until after the class, but my parents disagreed.
Though I joke that I should have been called “Cinderella” as a child, I now find chores a comfort in times of stress. I often “procrasticlean” when I’m faced with a dreaded task or a stalled work assignment. I clean the house before leaving on vacation so I can relax instead of worrying about returning home to disarray.
After my father passed away, I would come home from work and spend the evenings vacuuming the carpets and washing the floors on my knees. For months I cleaned as if my life depended on it, as if scrubbing could rescue me from my grief.
Nicole Starker
Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta
Canada
My family’s house is high on a mountain, at the end of a steep, mile-long driveway. Every year, when the first snow arrives, we park our vehicle at the bottom of the driveway and break out our skis, snowshoes, and snow boots to make the journey back and forth to the house. We have to ski down for work, school, a trip to town, or even to give cookies to our neighbor.
I used to dread these trips: stepping out in all sorts of weather, sometimes arriving at my destination soaking wet, then having to hike back up the slope after a long day.
Now that I’m older, though, I see things differently. As I walk in the fresh blanket of powder, I appreciate every minute of it. Waking up before anyone else, throwing on my snow gear, and leaving at the break of dawn isn’t a chore anymore; it’s life.
C.B.
Haines, Alaska
