When “We” Means “Me”
I am starting to see a pattern. Maybe you have someone who does this too.
Mr. H has a habit of casually saying “we” when a task needs to be done. We need to get the house painted, we need to get the barn door fixed, we need to organize our recipes… And my reply is, yes, I need to do that, don’t I? Because more often than not, “we” seems to mean “me.” House manager extraordinaire, reporting for duty.
I’m not sure how this happened. Perhaps all those years ago when he was working full-time and I was home looking after four kids and moving countries, it fell to me. No small job, mind you, but I became a pro at things like that and took them in stride. It was a division of labor that worked for us at the time, and somewhere along the way it simply became the way we did things.
But he has been retired for six years, and this year he is on “sabbatical” from his community commitments to explore other things, and travel. And I am still the house manager.
So this morning, when I got the “we should sort our recipe files” task over breakfast, I responded…
You do realize that when you say “we,” it means “me,” as in, I should do it? He went quiet. I had said it.
I quickly reminded him that last winter, if he recalled, I spent a lot of time gathering loose recipes by the fireside, reading through all the recipes we’ve collected in our 40 years of marriage, many of them separated by the country we lived in at the time. Adding NYT recipes from the Covid years, the ones we printed daily. I swear we doubled the volume of recipes when the kids moved home for six months. I let go of many of them, with a vow to return and organize the remainder. With that thought, I ended it by putting my favorites in a beautiful large Italian ceramic fruit bowl on our kitchen counter. In my mind, they are a work of art and a reminder to file them someday. Or keep as a wonderful memory.
In his mind, it’s a constant challenge to find a recipe. I get it.
I do not bring up the collection of cookbooks stacked around the kitchen and library. I know he sees them. That would start another “we” conversation involving “me”moving them on, and I don’t want to go there.
After 40 years, I’m very happy with our “we.” I’m just thinking it might be time to revisit the job descriptions. ;)
