Call Me Charlie

Issue 273

You guys,

One night, when Sam and I couldn’t sleep, I laid my head in his lap and he ran his fingers through my hair for a long time while he listened to a podcast. A few nights later we were laying in bed again and he asked if I could give him a leg massage, because he ran eighteen miles that morning.

“Are you serious?” I said. “I’m exhausted!”

Sam didn’t say anything, and then I remembered how he’d played with my hair until I fell asleep. “I’ll give you one tomorrow,” I added.

I never followed up on the leg massage.

I’ve been selfish my whole life. You might think as the middle child of five siblings I would have learned how to share better but I went the other way. No one could touch my stuff. Not even a bite of food on my plate. What’s mine was mine.

My brother used to always tell me I was selfish and it made me so mad.

“I’m not selfish!” I’d yell. And then, “Whatever, you’re gay.”

In my early thirties I reframed selfishness as a good thing. I was finally looking out for myself, practicing self-care. Selfishness was good. You have to be selfish sometimes and not worry so much about everyone else.

Now I’m forty. I have a husband and kids. When George asks to play Pattern Party I say yes but when he asks to play Hi Ho! Cherry-O I say no. I like Pattern Party. I hate Hi Ho! Cherry-O. When I saw it on the shelf at the store I remembered, vaguely, that I had played it at some point in my youth. When we got home and played the game and the little spinner prompted each of us, at some point, to put all our cherries back in the tree and start over, I remembered my disdain for the game. If Hi Ho! Cherry-O were a song it would be This Is The Song That Doesn’t End. But George likes it. And he wants to play. And I tell him no.

He’s also turning five this summer. He wants to have a birthday party. I do not want to host a 2-hour party in our backyard where we serve pizza and cupcakes and the kids run around parallel playing. But that is what George wants. I keep suggesting that we do something different, or at the very least invite less people, but George is steadfast in his birthday wishes.

Every day I get to write and work on my podcast, then I also do a load of laundry and go to the grocery store and clean up the kitchen, so I expect Sam to help equally with the kids at bedtime. Because I’ve done my part. How quickly I’ve forgotten the dread of working the 4:00 PM shift at the bar. How it ruined my whole day. How I could do little else except mope. I certainly couldn’t be creative. And yet Sam does the work he has to do, to provide for us, on top of all his creative work.

At what point does self-awareness of my selfishness turn into change?

I’m selfish, I’m aware of my selfishness, I don’t want to be selfish, and yet, I am still selfish.

I’m writing this post, hoping to make myself feel better about it, by putting it on the page and out of my head. I want to be a better person, parent, partner. I keep saying it, keep thinking it, keep willing it.

I will give Sam a leg massage next time.

I will plan the birthday party George wants.

I will play Hi Ho! Cherry-O.

Okay not the last one. One of these days, while George is at school, I will toss Hi Ho! Cherry-O in the trash. But I promise I will do the first two, and two out of three is pretty good.

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Until next week,

Charlie