I happened to be with a work colleague. We stood by the trunk of my car – a 2012 Volkswagen Passat that had seen better days. I opened the trunk and reached in for something. Maybe a pair of running shoes – I don’t quite remember. My trunk at the time was used for storage. Its contents might have included a green duffel that held a pair of ice skates, size 8, a reusable shopping bag with extra clothes for Belle and Bugg who were 6 and 3, a book or two that I hadn’t yet returned to the library, garbage bags full of clothes to donate (when I got around to it), an ice scraper, and other sundry items.
And then there were other, smaller things: grains of sand from multiple trips to the beach, needles from last year’s Christmas tree, and Goldfish cracker crumbs that had swum into the trunk from the backseat where Belle and Bugg regularly munched on them in their carseats.
There’s a writing exercise that I sometimes give to my students: write about what’s in the trunk of your character’s car. It’s a way of getting to know the character. Of expanding the student’s understanding of this person.
What could you understand about me from my trunk? My colleague, a male, took one look and said, “You should really clean your trunk.”
At the time I felt instant shame. He was right. It was dirty and cluttered. It reflected poorly on me as a human being. What was I thinking, letting people see into the intimacies of my family’s detritus?
My cheeks turned pink. I really wanted this colleague to like me, and I felt like I blew it because I couldn’t put a clean veneer on my family’s chaotic life.
This was seven years ago, and the comment has stuck with me ever since. For years I felt ashamed, just like when I lifted an inner tube above my head at a water park in seventh grade and my “friend” pointed and laughed at my hairy armpits. There was a very clear message in the dirty trunk and the hairy armpits: don’t let people see your reality. Make sure that you clean and polish everything before you show it to the world. Crumbs and stray hairs are not allowed if you want to be liked.
For years the cluttered, crumb-filled trunk bugged me. If I was the main character in a story, I certainly did not want that trunk to define me. If I were writing my own story my trunk would hold three pairs of shoes: hiking boots, heels, and flip flops. I would be ready for anything. For two years, during my separation from Darth, my trunk held a yoga mat and running shoes, the two things that kept me sane when I didn’t have a stable home. (Watch for a post on this coming soon).
Now I have a new car that has a hidden compartment under the floor of the trunk. I love it. That’s where I keep my hiking boots, reusable shopping bags, and dog blanket. If you looked in my trunk today, it would look empty – ready to be loaded up for a weekend trip or a Costco run – just the way I like it.
You have no idea how much I wish that I had seen the misogyny in that comment all those years ago. Thankfully, I do see it now. And I see that telling a woman, particularly a mother who was going through cancer treatment, working two jobs, and parenting full-time, that it was her job to keep the family car clean (we only had one car, and it served primarily as Belle and Bugg’s chariot and Darth’s vehicle for hardware store runs) held me responsible for something that I was not responsible for at all. I remember staring into my trunk and thinking, “How am I supposed to find the time to clean this? Never mind the energy. And the kids would just mess it up the next week.”
I love tidiness. I really love it. I grew up in a very clean house and I’ve grown used to it. Clutter and dirt climb under my skin and into my brain and make me feel like I’m going crazy. But small kids come with lots of stuff, and for years it felt like I cleaned and decluttered whenever I could, and made no headway. My ex-husband thought I loved cleaning. He never understood: I just wanted things to be clean. Yep – I was the one on my hands and knees cleaning the bathroom floor on my due date with Bugg, just like my grandmother did the day she gave birth to my dad. It wasn’t because I loved cleaning, and it wasn’t because I was trying to go into labor.
It was because we had a houseguest, and I wanted to be sure the bathroom was clean for her when I went to the hospital to give birth. And do you know what? Darth actually saw me doing this. He stood over me while I cleaned and he even complained that having houseguests meant that I had to clean.
Fierce tit pivot: I will never, ever, tell a woman and mother that she should keep her car, her house, or herself clean again. Holding women responsible for the unpaid labor of cleaning up after a family is perhaps one of the worst forms of misogyny. When I see a mom with a full trunk, a dirty car, a house strewn with toys or books or papers, I don’t think of her as a mess who needs to learn to take care of herself. I think of her as someone who has been given more than she can handle.
God might not give us more than we can handle, but families do.
Sometimes, now, I leave dishes in the sink overnight. (Darth couldn’t stand this). I forgive others, and also myself, for leaving things untidy, cluttered, and messy.
Men take care of themselves and their stuff, and then everyone else.
Women take care of everyone else, and then themselves and their stuff, if there’s time and energy leftover.
When I can spare the money, I will hire someone to clean my house and my car. I never thought I would say this, but I also never realized what a complete joke it is to expect a woman to have a career, care for children and herself, and keep a house and car clean. Plus, someone should be paid for that work, and I don’t want to clean houses or cars for pay. (So why do I clean them for free?)
If I could go back seven years, I certainly wouldn’t clean that trunk. No. I would give my colleague (and also my husband) a good lesson in the devaluing of “women’s work” and the amount of uncompensated labor that is done by mothers.
Want to be a Fierce tit this week? Make a mess. And don’t clean it up.