Ladies, be careful what you wish for!

I realize that at times, I may sound like the proverbial broken record. (If we still had records.)

In columns past, I have perhaps over-zealously stated that I am a Jill-of-all trades … around the house, anyway.

Jack is good at grilling, but really emphatically, albeit silently, insists on doing little else.

If, for example, I asked Jack to go up the hill to fetch me a pail of stinking water, he may do it a week from Tuesday, after a golf game, after a trip to Sam’s, after trekking to Blue Ribbon, after enjoying three straight hours of ESPN and after poker night.

By the time Jack fetched that water, Jill could’ve walked to a free-flowing spring in Arkansas, collected said water, packaged it into bio-degradable, earth-friendly containers, and balanced it on her head to walk back home again.

In other words, Jack does Jack-you know what around the house.

Or did.

Until the Big C hoisted itself, uninvited, upon our already chaotic life.

Then, you see, it became necessary for my Jack to pick up the slack and actually become a pseudo-Jill for a few weeks. Because I traveled to Georgia for my surgery, my husband was unceremoniously jettisoned into a world of dirty dishes, rank laundry, icky, sticky floors and children who apparently must be watered, fed and groomed on most days.

I called home my first night in Georgia, feeling homesick and anxious. Was I more anxious about the impending mastectomy or about my husband’s ability to remember where the Band Aids and Neosporin were kept? You guess.

“Kids! It’s Mommy!” I shrieked.

“Who?” my 12 year-old asked.

“Very funny. Did you eat yet? Did Dad take the nuggets out of the carton at least?”

He assured me, “Mom. We just had, like, the best meal EVER! Dad made us pork chops and mashed potatoes! And guess what? Potatoes really are things that grow out of the ground and they aren’t all made by a guy named Bob Evans like you told me! ALSO … he used this gadget called a ‘potato masher’ Mom! Did you even know we had such a thing???”

“Put your father on the phone immediately!” I snapped.

My husband, giggling delightedly in the background, grabbed the phone.

I shrieked: “Just what the hell are you trying to pull, Rachel Ray??? They think potatoes come pre-mashed in a plastic container, all waffles are made frozen in the Eggo factory and Fluff has its own tier on the damn food pyramid! Now don’t go screwing with the methodology I took years to perfect! Plus – I need them to miss me!”

“Relax,” my Jack said calmly. “I could never take your place. I don’t even technically know where your place is. And I’ve recently realized I don’t know what spray starch is used for either, by the way.”

I felt better. “Well, okay, then. Stop making homemade stuff. It’ll just confuse them when I start serving Cap’n Crunch encrusted fish sticks again.”

Once home, I was unable to complete most chores, but most able to critique the ones he had to complete.

My first morning, I slithered into the kitchen, cranky and groggy from the medication. I thought that I was surely hallucinating. My husband was on his hands and knees – SCRUBBING the floor.

“What in God’s name are you doing now? That’s the way my grandmother used to scrub floors. Nowadays we use the Swiffer Wet Jet!”

“Well. You just cannot get it clean enough if you don’t scrub by hand. Besides Swiffers are for sissies!”

“Mother of God. You’re killing me. I’m going back to bed. Where I can pretend you don’t clean anything but your stinking putter.”

I left him muttering and growling about a newly-discovered divot burned into the floor caused by me flinging hot, boiling Karo Syrup when I was trying to be lollipop-innovative for a recent bake sale. When I heard him vacuuming later in the day, I peeked around the corner. “Why are you using that big vacuum? You just need a broom for that floor!”

“This is why we have so many dust bunnies! You don’t know how to clean the right way,” he declared perkily.

I rolled my eye and returned to bed. Where I took two more pills.

I think I’ve taken up residence in the town of “Never Satisfied”. I did appreciate his assistance, but he does things just so … so … differently.

And sometimes, perhaps more effectively than I.

I would never validate that aloud, however, especially since the kids have been begging for him to cook those stupid potatoes again.

Little ingrates.

So, if Jack and Jill go up the hill to fetch a pail of water, perhaps Jack can occasionally fall down and do the laundry, the cooking and the vacuuming and then Jill can get a facial at the hilltop spa, before resuming her usual role of ever-suffering house maiden.

Because I’m certainly not planning on tumbling after him again anytime soon.

Back in real life, once the ice and snow melts, he’ll return to the golf course, I can commence my whining and complaining, he can ignore me, I will then not wash his underwear but fling them in a corner until he apologizes for some misdeed and all will be right in my world once again.

You have your fairy tales, I have mine.

About the Author

Maria Heck covers for the Times Leader. Reach her at or .

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