ninanevermore

Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about gender roles. Specifically, I was thinking about how my husband is a better at "female stuff" than I am. Don't get me wrong. He's plenty masculine. He likes cars and airplanes and he curses in a very macho way. He's handy with a hammer and wicked with a wrench. But in other ways, he's a much better woman than I.

It occured to me this weekend as we were cooking dinner together. I dumped a pan of green beans from a steamer basket into a serving dish that was sitting in the kitchen sink. Three green beans missed the dish and landed in the basin. I had just been washing things in that sink and had wiped down the inside of it with a soapy sponge and rinsed it clean, so I didn't consider these beans to be a loss. I picked them up and tossed them in the dish with the other beans.

"Ewe," said my husband, looking over my shoulder and making note of where in the dish the three tainted beans landed, "you can eat those one."

I took a spoon and tossed the beans to mix them up, the tainted beans with the pristine beans.

"Don't be such a girl," I said.

He raised his eyebrows. "I am not a girl," he said, "You're just jealous that I'm a better wife and mother than you are."

He is, too. It is Jeff, not me, who can hear our son cry and say, "Something's wrong. That's not his frustrated cry, that's his hurt cry."

Before Jeff said this the first time, I didn't even realize our son had more than one cry. I knew he had two volumes - loud and louder - but I always thought they were the same cry played at different levels. Of course, when we check on the little guy, his father who-is-also-an-excellent-mother is right; our son's arm or leg will be caught in the bars of his crib, or something to that effect. If Jeff hears a pain cry, it's never a pacifier that has fallen to the floor or a bad dream. Since our son was an infant, Jeff could hear the difference between hunger, frustration and pain, and I couldn't. Does this make me feel inept? You bet.

When it comes to decorating, he is definitely has more delicate taste than I. He likes ornate things and doesn't mind big floral prints. I prefer clean, simple lines and patterns with deep, rich colors. Pastels make me want to puke, whereas Jeff finds them appealing.

"What do you think of this?" he'll ask me, holding up something bright and cutesy and insipid.

"Ugh," I will say, "it's too froufrou. But then, you like that stuff. Are you sure you're not the chick in this relationship?"

"Don't lecture me on taste. I've seen the stuff you like. You have the taste of a long-haul trucker."

I don't know where he gets comparing me to a trucker; this isn't the only time he's done it. When I was pregnant, he slept on the couch because he said that I had taken to snoring loudly and that sleeping next to me was like "trying to sleep next to a Russian truck driver." One of these days I'm going to confront him and ask if he has a past with a Russian long-haul truck driver that he wants to come clean about.

Still, he's not just a great wife and mother, he's also a good husband and father. He tinkers and fixes things. He mows the lawn. He moves heavy stuff. He kills bugs when they need killing so that I don't have to. If I did these things, I could say we have our roles on backwards. But we don't. He just wears both roles better than I do. Before our son came along, I had the advantage of being the cutest person in the house, but even that's not true anymore.

On the other hand, I do have a skill that makes me essential. I can shop. Not being all that girly, I don't really like to, but Jeff doesn't even know where one would go to buy things like socks, underwear, shirts and blue jeans. To his mind, you wear these things until they fall apart in the wash and then hope someone gives you new ones for Christmas. He does know where to buy food, but would rather not. He will start eating from the dented cans in the back of the pantry before breaking down and running to the grocery store. Because I know where to purchase textiles and am willing to stop off for provisions, I serve a useful purpose in our household. It's not as good as being the best mother that my son has, but it has to do.