January 27 -- So today was another snow day. Again. When the phone rang at five-thirty and Brian hung up I was certain it would be a delayed opening. When he said school had been canceled I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Unbelievable.
Anyway, the one good thing is that our driveway is almost a quarter of a mile long so when the kids go out to snowblow and shovel, they are out there for a nice, long time. So that brought it down to just me and Tessa in the house. I put a moratorium on any screen activity and she curled up for a while with a book. I was able to work uninterrupted. Not bad.
After a while, I decided to see how the boys were faring and to tell Riley his father wanted him to go into work for the afternoon. (hooray!) I reminded Tessa that since she didn't have to go out to shovel snow, I expected her to clean up the kitchen and run a load of laundry. When I went outside, I saw some areas where I could help the boys. I picked up a shovel and got to work. We scraped the ice off the car, swept the garage floor and then, grabbing a spade, I started to smash up the ice which was forming at the end of the bay. And that's when I had my epiphany. Banging at the ice made me remember back so many years ago, when I would break up the ice on my parents' driveway. They had one of those half moon metal ice picks and I would stand there and just bang, bang, bang at the asphalt. It was annoying but there was always a sense of gratification when the ice was broken and cleared away.
I stopped for a minute and thought to myself, I was always out there. Every storm. There was never a question how the workload would be distributed. We bundled up, girls and boys, and headed out to shovel. I was NEVER allowed to stay inside because I was a girl. And, quite frankly, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Truly. Girls who let boys do their dirty work annoyed me. And yet...omigod...it occurred to me that Brian and I were raising the very kind of girl I resented. The ones who always whined at hard labor and couldn't do "boy chores" like cut the grass or change the car oil. A princess, through and through.
Tessa is very athletic and tough. She could definitely be outside shoveling. She's a peanut, for sure but she can be pretty fierce out on the lacrosse field, all 4'11" of her. So why was I letting her stay inside, all sheltered? I have to say, I am wary of letting this pattern continue. I am 100% guilty of feeding the stereotype. I want her to be strong and tough and self-reliant. Keeping her away from shoveling while the boys head out into the cold will not help at all.
And I am not even going to discuss the state of the house when I got inside. Needless to say, she is the quintessential, social 13 year old girl. When I came in the keys on the computer keyboard were still warm from her touch.
So Brian just jumped up from the computer himself. It's 8:45pm and, completely absorbed in our work/writing, we forgot all about our little princess...ballet class ended 15 minutes ago! Ughh. We are failing!!
Yup. We've got some work ahead of us for sure.
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