Photo by elizabetht at www.flickr.com
I have been a wife for almost 13 years and a mother for almost 11, but I admit that I am “domestically disabled”. I married my high school sweetheart and we met when we were in cooking class together in high school. Being on the teacher’s good side, I asked to be put in his cooking group. Well, long story short, I burnt the rice, he cleaned out the pans and since then, we’ve been living happily ever after in our modified role reversal lives.
However, since I am a person that likes to learn and grow (read: addicted to self-improvement books), I am open to new challenges and constantly on the search for new ideas. These challenges, I believe, present themselves to everyone in different ways.
In our life, one way they have presented themselves is as health issues for my husband. This challenged me to test my cooking “abilities”. We found out that he needed emergency eye surgery for a detached retina and would have to lay face down for 23 hours per day for 2-3 weeks. We knew we were in for an interesting challenge.
We were fortunate that our moms are great cooks. Fearing that I might feed my family horribly burnt food or starve them altogether, they helped stock our freezer with wonderful meals for me to reheat. In addition, I had the amazing support of co-workers that did not hesitate to pull together simple recipes, crock pot ideas, and shopping lists to help ease my burden and save a few taste buds in the process. I am very lucky to have so many amazing women in my life. All of these things helped ease my challenge.
Most moms might think that putting together a meal with various ingredients is a simple task. But, getting them all done in time so that it turns into a hot meal stresses me out completely. Of course, there are a few things that I can make that are pretty basic, but really, my kids are so tired of “mom’s special sandwiches”.
I am happy to report that we had some meals that turned out really well and the kids were extremely impressed. The only thing I burnt while cooking was my hand while taking something out of the oven. We also had many amazing reheated meals from the grandmas. However, it was wonderful to be able to provide and take care of my family in a way that pushes me to test my skills and build confidence in myself. As an unexpected surprise, I learned that I LOVE crock pots.
Now we are back to our old routine: he cooks, I clean. But, I am much more confident that the next time a cooking challenge arises (and it will), I can tackle it. It also makes me extremely thankful that my husband is an amazing chef and can toss together an amazing meal in under 20 minutes!
QUESTION: What things would you like to progress on in your life?
CHALLENGE: Make a list of things that you would like to learn or get better at. Pick (at least) one and figure out the next action to move you closer to your goal.
I can totally relate to being “Domestically Disabled”. I left home at an early age and was on my own for many years, then came college and my career and THEN marriage (at 30). By that time I was thoroughly disabled because I had only ever taken care of myself. This was a great article. It gives me hope!
Chantol, great article! We can all make progress, can’t we? But we do have to prioritize where we’re going to expend our energy. I have been going through a phase in my domestic life where I am just done with cooking. Staying on top of laundry for 8 people and making sure they’re all where they need to be while remaining fully dressed and somewhat clean takes so much of my energy that the feeding part has had to get fast and easy. We do a LOT of sandwiches and quesadillas around here. Not to mention our fair share of Little Caesar’s pizza. And I’m okay with that right now. I’m choosing to prioritize other things over creating a “hot meal”. Someday I hope that won’t seem like such a burden for me and I’ll start cooking (and enjoying it) again!