I do not normally like Orson Scott Card. My sister does, but I have never really been a fan. However, I read this article today and I really like it. I think too many women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints get too caught up in this kind of a thing.
(I added the pictures)
Bad Wife or Just a Busy One?
by Orson Scott Card
Published: Thursday, Sep. 25, 2008
I wondered if my wife had a kind of Joan Crawford thing going on when she told me, about six years into our marriage, that she could not live with the idea of my taking my shirts to a professional laundry.
"What is it?" I asked. "The plastic bags? We can tie them in knots so the kids can never play with them."
"It's not the plastic bags!" Kristine looked so miserable. I decided to cheer her up with humor.
"The wire hangers?" I asked, pointedly.Since this was only a few years after "Mommy Dearest," she got the joke. It didn't cheer her up at all. "You think I'm some kind of monster."
"No," I said. "I don't. I think you're a very busy woman, doing things that the whole family needs you to do."
The list of what she was doing really was quite remarkable. Our then-youngest child was born with cerebral palsy, and Kristine was taking care of him along with our other two children -- and handling the family finances, and dealing with scheduling and transportation, and anything that required making a list and remembering 10 minutes later that there was such a list and where it had been put.
The traditional division of labor was not for us. I had vowed to myself before I even proposed to her that there would never be a job so loathsome, tedious or difficult that my wife could do it and I couldn't. I could clean a toilet, wash and dry dishes, cook a meal, and vacuum a floor (not in that order, of course).
When she handled the check writing, the checks went where they were supposed to go and did what they were supposed to do. When I wrote checks, they often found their way to the Great Banking Trampoline. Our lives became so much better when I no longer carried the checkbook. Ever.
And while our firstborn loved the lullabies his mommy sang to him, when it came to seriously trying to go to sleep, that was daddy's job. From infancy on, he needed a deep baritone voice to fall asleep to. (In my years of teaching, I've found that many children and adults share this trait. I'm always happy to oblige.)
In my son's case, getting him to sleep was a long, long labor. I spent years lying on the floor of his room every night, with a little slant of light from the hall letting me see and grade student papers or stories that I was going to review, and all the while, hour after hour, I'm singing the only song that he'd accept, "Away in a Manger," over and over, in every season of the year. All versions, all verses.
It was my job because he would accept no substitutes. He has no memory of this, though it persisted till he was 5. But I still dream it.
We divided the labor according to my mom's and dad's old slogan: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." (None of us knew that it was an old Communist precept.)
When it came to my shirts, though, I ran into a wall of irrationality.
Because, you see, my wife had internalized the idea that a good Mormon wife irons her husband's shirts.
"So let me see if I understand this," I said. "You can't let me take my shirts to the cleaners, even though we can easily afford it, because if I do, it will mean you're a bad wife."
"Yes," she said unhappily.
"So the shirts pile up in the laundry room until there are 30 shirts there and I have to buy a new one. Or iron them myself. My mother taught me how. I have the skill. Only I don't
want to iron them, I want to take them to the cleaners. Why won't you
let me?"
"But if you take your shirts to the cleaners, it will mean that I've failed as a wife!"
"To whom will it mean this?" I asked. "Not to me. Not to the kids. Who else will know?"
"It'll mean that to me!" she wailed. "I know I'm being irrational, but that's how it feels."
"It also feels like a colossal waste of your time to iron them, and that's why you don't do it," I said, "because at any given moment on any day of any week of any year, you have something better to do than iron any shirts of mine."
"But if the other women in the ward found out that I ... "
And in that moment, she knew and I knew that I had won. I gloated immediately. "I thought we prided ourselves on making our own division of labor based on what worked in our marriage."
Glumly she nodded.
"Right now I own 30 shirts, all of which are in the laundry room, most of them clean and waiting to be ironed. Other men don't have to own 30 shirts in order to have a hope of a clean, ironed shirt to wear."
"Go," she said. "Take the shirts. Have them washed and pressed by the pros."
You'd have thought it was 1870 and she was giving me permission to take a plural wife.
Skip a few years. Now we shall talk about bread.
I grew up on homemade bread. There was no better food in all the world -- no, not even a spice cake with penuche icing for my birthday, not even pistachio ice cream in Brazil or France or Italy -- than my mother's bread, white or wheat, when it was still so fresh out of the oven you could barely slice it, eaten in thick slabs full of melting butter.
If they don't serve that in the celestial kingdom, I'm not going. Not that I expect my mother to bake bread every day in heaven. Once a week will do.
My wife knew this. But she is not a bread baker.
Don't misunderstand. Kristine is a great cook. She makes perfect pie crust every time. Her gravy always tastes perfect and never has lumps. And she never serves me Jell-O or anything involving Cool Whip. But for one reason or another, she never learned to make bread.
So when, in the late 1980s, I turned up with a breadmaker, she didn't view it as a cool piece of cutting edge technology. She saw it as an insult to her Mormon wifehood.
Because, just as Mormon wives had to iron their husband's shirts, they apparently also had to bake bread for their families.
"But you don't bake bread," I pointed out helpfully.
"Because I'm a terrible wife!"
"You're a wonderful wife who doesn't bake bread. Every now and then I'd like a loaf of hot fresh bread. Making bread is a lot of work and neither of us has time to do it or even time to learn. But this machine already knows how. Let's let the machine bake bread for us."
I think the machine has made two loaves of bread since 1989. Why? Because we both know that when the breadmaker comes out of the corner of the kitchen counter, my wife feels like a failure.
So we buy all our bread at Great Harvest Bread Co. It's almost as good as my mother's. If you toast it or nuke it, you can get butter to melt on it.
Somehow buying good healthy bread from a bakery is something a good Mormon wife can tolerate. But at least one good Mormon wife can't let a machine bake bread for her.
O my fellow Saints, ye males and ye females! Hearken to my voice!
There are so many ways to be a good Mormon wife. They involve taking all the talents and all the time and all the means that God has given you and using them to serve others, especially your family.
The key phrase is that you use the talents God has given you. And you use the time that you actually have.
1. Not everybody is good at everything. I can't manage money. Kristine can't write novels. So I write the books and she pays the bills.
2. Not every possible use of your time is as important as every other use. Kristine didn't have time to take care of our kids' needs (including the handicapped one), do her church callings, run our business, and learn to make bread and iron my stupid shirts.
Here's what a good Mormon wife does: Whatever must be done for the good of her family.
Here's what a good Mormon wife does not do: Beat herself up because she can't do every good thing that she's seen other Mormon wives do. There is no article of faith or temple recommend interview question dealing with shirt-ironing or bread-baking or even money-managing.
We all have our own marriages, our own talents, our own lives. Keep the commandments, be kind to each other and provident and wise with your children.
After that, whatever you do is what Good Mormon Wives and Husbands do; and whatever you don't do is obviously something that you don't have to do to be a Good Mormon Spouse.
I just pasted 30 weeks. I cannot believe I have made it this far with so few problems. After it taking so long to be able to get past two months, it is such a blessing to have an easy pregnancy that is getting close to full-term.
Friday night, Jon and I had our monthly trip into Michigan. There was some bad traffic mixed with construction, but surprisingly it didn't set us back too much. I tried to take some pictures of the fall colors while we were stopped in traffic, but my camera was not working. It was beautiful! I love the drive on Highway 23. The road is lined with trees and right now they are various shades of green, red, yellow, and brown.
We were able to make a stop in Ann Arbor and get Panda Express which we haven't had in a while. It tasted so good! I had a hard time sitting through the endowment session. I just get really uncomfortable sitting for that long. It is going to be a long 10 weeks. We might have to try sealings next month. I will have to see.
On the way home, we stopped at the Meijer in the area. We wanted to see if they still had some of the cheese we need for our Christmas tradition, but sadly it seems that Meijer is not carrying Raclette anymore. We will have to find another supplier, or have it shipped from Northern Michigan.
Okay, so we were not singing in the rain, but Wednesday Night, Jon and I went for a walk in the rain. It was not coming down very hard when we left, but it was pouring before we were able to get back. We were soaked! It was awesome! The weather had been a little warmer, and so it was a warm rain.
There was a point when we thought a police car was following us, because let's face it we did look a little suspicious, walking in the pouring rain. It turns out that he was just looking for a certian appartment. There have been a few more break-ins around our place recently.
Slow dance. It is still the same "deacon shuffle."
There was a football toss competition. The Young Men had to throw with there opposite throwing arm to make it more fair.
There was also a limbo competition. This first picture was a little messed up. I forgot I had my camera zoomed in and I was trying to catch a picture of the action.
It's hard to limbo after knee surgery with a brace.
Friday Night, Jon and I decided to try something new for our weekly date. Caper's Pizza had been highly recommended to Jon so we decided to try it out. It was pretty good, and very reasonably priced. I don't know if it is a place we will go often, but it was good. It is fun to try new things, and it was something different from where we normally go out to eat.
I have a personal triumph as of late. Last weekend I decided I was going to get my email inbox cleaned out. I had over thirty emails in there and I always felt a little discouraged when I would log in to see all those I need to write. So over conference weekend I wrote about thirty-five emails (to respond to many who have been siting in my inbox for more months than I am willing to admit) and was able to get my inbox to less then ten. 
The real accomplishment has been that it has stayed under ten all week, and not because I have not received any new ones, but because I have responded more promptly, deleted more regularly, and read forwards when I got them (except political ones, which are just discarded, because as far as political forwards go they are always incorrect and very biased).
At this point, if the emails for my calling, which I simply keep for a reminder and are archived when the activity is over, are taken out, I actually have less then five emails I need to respond to and they have all been written to me this week. I am just hoping that I can keep it up. It looks so much better!
Jon and I went to MacQueen Orchards to pick apples for Family Home Evening last night. Some may remember that Jon and I did this last year too. It was lots of fun, and worth doing a second year. This year we split a half of a bushel with our neighbors downstairs, the Slater Family. We were able to get larger apples this year and to pick some from the ground! After we were done, I wanted to get some Apple Butter because I have heard that it is really good. It is! I had to try it when we got home too. 
Family picture.
I, like most members of my church, really enjoy General Conference. I think it is really awesome that God still speaks to His children through His prophets. Jon and I enjoyed gathering around our computer to watch via the Internet. There were a few problems in viewing conference, but we did get to watch most of it. The problems were some what fixable. When the receiver at our church quit working during the Priesthood Session, 
Jon went to the Stake Center, which luckily is only about a 15 minute drive. Then when BYU-TV.com quit working at the beginning of the Sunday afternoon session, we just switched over to lds.org, which worked well enough.
It was a good weekend with only one stumbling block. During the Saturday afternoon session, a gland under my jaw started to hurt. Later that night, I had a slight fever, chills, and my lungs were hurting too. Right before I went to bed I noticed my sinuses were a little sore. 
I woke up in the middle of the the night and from my teeth to my neck had started to hurt too. I also noticed the normal congestion that has plagued me every night since I cannot take decongestant, so I took an antihistamine. It seemed to help the pain I was experiencing, too, which leads me to believe that all this is allergy related. This gland on the left side under my jaw hurt all day Sunday and still hurts. I don't know what the problem is, but I am glad that nothing else came of it. No other sick feelings have developed. I have never have sore glands due to allergies (that I can remember).
This morning on the first day of October, I had a little bit of a scare. I turned on the computer, and heard a horrible noise. I was afraid we were going to loose our hard drive again. I quickly turned it off again. Then, I opened the tower and found some nice dust bunnies. I blew them out, and dusted around the outside of the entire thing. I turned it on again, and the noise was not as bad. Jon said to leave it on and see if it fixed itself. It did, and now is fine. It looks like I will have to blow out the dust every week instead of 
once a month. I could not believe how dusty it was inside. A little compressed air regularly should solve the problem.
Jon got home from Iowa at about 9:45 last night. Sadly, he had to jump right back into school bright and early this morning. He said it was a good experience, but over all I 
do not think he enjoyed it as much as he had wanted. I am just glad he is home!
I cannot believe that there are now less than three months until Christmas! It is coming so fast! What a wonderful time of year!
College Football without Jon, I am not looking forward to the rest of the weekend. Jon left at noon today to head for an Emergency Medicine Regional Conference in Iowa City, IA. He is presenting some of the research which was done in the 
Emergency Department of UTCOM this summer. I will let him tell about the conference, since he is there. I just know he was not looking forward to going this early, because the conference is not until Monday, but there are now there Saturday night. He does not know what he will do while the rest of those he went with are off drinking and partying all weekend.
Well, I am going to get back to watching College Football. I just wanted to let everyone know what Jon was up to for the weekend.
"The wire hangers?" I asked, pointedly.Since this was only a few years after "Mommy Dearest," she got the joke. It didn't cheer her up at all. "You think I'm some kind of monster."
Because, you see, my wife had internalized the idea that a good Mormon wife irons her husband's shirts.
"So the shirts pile up in the laundry room until there are 30 shirts there and I have to buy a new one. Or iron them myself. My mother taught me how. I have the skill. Only I don't want to iron them, I want to take them to the cleaners. Why won't you let me?"
So when, in the late 1980s, I turned up with a breadmaker, she didn't view it as a cool piece of cutting edge technology. She saw it as an insult to her Mormon wifehood.
So we buy all our bread at Great Harvest Bread Co. It's almost as good as my mother's. If you toast it or nuke it, you can get butter to melt on it.
