Don’t Just Complain, Do Something

Poor but happy! One of my girlfriends on the left … probably relieved that I’d stopped whining.

I complained about R — my second husband — to anyone who’d listen. All of whom were women, in 1979.

But I wasn’t actually complaining about R. Instead, it was the unfairness of the situation that slid me into a nonstop recital of grievances. My inner kindergarten kid surfaced, wounded, indignant: It wasn’t fair that I did all the laundry, made all the meals, handled 90 percent of the child care. It wasn’t fair that when we learned to buy split wood for our wood furnace, Round Oak living-room woodstove, and kitchen stove with its six iron discs on top for pots and its wide baking oven, we couldn’t afford to have the wood delivered. So I went to collect it, one-third of a cord at a time, with the Subaru — its back door propped up, and the baby in the front passenger seat.

Why was I doing that? Because every time R began to contribute, he’d bend over to maybe pick up a pair of socks and his back would “go out.” Screaming in very real pain, he’d collapse on the floor or drag himself to bed.

There were other catastrophes, often involving cutting a finger deeply or suffering the whip-and-slash of a suddenly breaking chainsaw chain with its harsh jagged triangular teeth. Even burns from picking up the kettle of boiling water for tea without using a potholder — a kettle heated on the wood cookstove, every inch of it vibrating with the dark…