Scott Benner - Life Is Short, Laundry Is Eternal: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad

Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad

BY SCOTT BENNER

Text copyright 2013 Scott Benner
Cover copyright 2013 Spry Publishing LLC

All rights reserved under International and
Pan American Copyright Conventions.

No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This edition is published by Spry Publishing LLC
2500 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 USA

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012955674

10987654321

E-book ISBN: 978-1-938170-16-4

For and because of Kelly, Cole, and Arden

Life Is Short, Laundry Is Eternal was born out of my genuine desire to introduce both men and women to the world on the opposite side of the parental gender gap. We all live our lives so close to each other every day, but our perspectives and the preconceptions that we judge with ever skew our view of the others world.

Rife with misconceptions, the life of a stay-at-home parent is often mocked but very rarely appreciated by the people who benefit most from that parents dedicated work and persistence. Far too many think of this noblest of professions as easy, women's work, or, at best, secondary to the task of making a living. Being a stay-at-home parent is by far the most rewarding experience of my life, and I want you to see it through my eyes. Our childrens growth is a marvel to behold, and shepherding them to the moment when we as parents hand them off to life is a transformational journey that I wish for every adult. From my son Coles conception to the diagnosis of my daughter Ardens type 1 diabetes, I couldn't help but to give my heart over to the family that my wife Kelly and I created.

Life Is Short, Laundry Is Eternal is my unfiltered account of the moments that shape a family. There is simply no better career in the world than being a stay-at-home parent. If you don't believe me now, you will when you've finished reading my confessions.

I think that I know why people become nudiststo have less laundry. Some quick math tells me that I complete an average of fifteen loads of laundry a week or more than sixty a month. Thats more than seven hundred a year and nearly nine thousand in my time as a stay-at-home dad. In fact, by the time this book is published Ill have washed, dried, folded, and put away another almost thousand loads of laundry, and each one sucks a little more than the last.

Doing the laundry is so terrible that if a genie popped out of a bottle right now and said to me, Answer fast, no more laundry or world peacechoose! Id actually pause before I responded, World peace. And, I guarantee that there would be days in the future while I was living in our new utopian and peaceful world that Id regret my decision. That moment would likely come after a particularly long session of sort, fold, and put away.

In the laundry, shirts are evidence of your eating mistakes and rub up into your armpits. Pants are heavy, and they often take longer to dry than the rest of the load. Socks smell like, well, socks, and grabbing a sweaty one that hasnt completely dried when you are loading the machine makes you reconsider every life choice that brought you to that moment. Thats righta cold, damp sock has caused me to reconsider more than once my lifes path.

And then theres underwear In what other walk of life would you consider removing your underwear, tossing them (hopefully) into a basket, and then assuming that someone will refresh them for you without compensation? No other. As an adult you wouldnt ask your mother, brother, priest, boss, or the guy who changes your oil to handle this task, but for some reason we dont think twice about asking our spouses to do it. Think back to when you were dating the person whom youre married to today. Did you ever let that person see your dirty clothes? Would you have left a smelly shirt on the bed? I bet not. However, a few I dos later, and you are tossing your clothes around like there is a magic elf to bring them back clean.

Some of you miss the laundry basket and dont rebound. Others like to leave clothes on the floor next to the bed or in the living room. I had to purchase a large wicker basket for our family room so that my family could have a place to put their shoes. I, of course, thought that the bedroom closet that was provided would be a great place to put those shoes, but things never worked out quite that way. At least now when they abandon them in favor of another pair, its easier for me to carry them upstairs and put them away.

Doing the laundry is the worst domestic task that I have ever encountered, but its also a wonderful window into how working and stay-at-home spouses unfairly judge one another.

Recently my son Cole played a baseball game on a dreary Saturday afternoon. There was a huge storm system headed our way, but the rain held off long enough for the boys to play. With the storm bearing down there was little chance that theyd be able to get their next game in on the following day, so I didnt rush to do the laundry after Saturdays game.

Of course it never did rain that night, at least not hard enough to cancel the game on Sunday.

How did my son Cole show up with a clean uniform? The previous night around 1:30 AM when I was quietly checking Ardens blood glucose level and making an adjustment to her insulin, I noticed that I didnt hear the rain outside as I had expected. It was in that silence that I realized that I had never washed Coles baseball uniform. So I put in a load of laundry, knowing that Id be up for at least an hour to watch over Ardens blood glucose level. When the wash cycle finished, I moved the load to the dryer, checked on Arden once more, and finally went back to sleep.

When the topic of clean uniforms came up at Sundays game and I recounted my story, one of the fathers turned to a mother and said, See, he does the laundry in the middle of the night and doesnt complain about it. He clearly didnt think that doing the laundry was in anyway a tough task.

Before the mother could respond, I stepped back into the conversation and tried to explain why doing the laundry is so terrible. It seems that the spouse who goes to work outside of the house doesnt think that doing the laundry is any big deal. Its even considered a joke, especially in comparison to the tasks and pressures that the other spouse faces. In the end, hearing from another man how unpleasant, time consuming, and soul-sucking the task really is didnt help sway the man one bit.

In my life Ive worked in retail, done landscaping, and was a baker. I even operated an industrial steel saw when I was in my early twenties. In the few years that I ran that saw, I almost cut off the pointer finger on my right hand. I burned a hole in the top of my foot, went blind for a weekend from welders flash, and sliced a gash in my left palm that required hundreds of stitches. Please listen to me when I say this doing the laundry repeatedly for countless years is worse than all of that combined! I am not exaggerating, gilding the lily, or even telling a tale out of school. Plainly, sorting the laundry, folding the laundry, and putting away the laundry is the scourge of my existence.

When our home was redesigned, I only asked for one improvement. It wasnt a media room or a man cave. I asked if it was possible to put the laundry room on the second floor. I even had the builder pack its walls with soundproofing insulation so I could use the machines while my family slept. The architect remarked at the time that I was the only man who ever showed an interest in where the laundry room would be. I asked him how many of the men he met were stay-at-home dads, and he couldnt think of one.