... that my fears about leaving Mr. J in charge for most of the first two weeks at the kids' new school were unfounded. He stepped up to the plate beautifully. In fact, I now think it was a real blessing that I was gone so much those first few weeks, because it forced him to develop strategies to manage without my contribution. Now that I am home, he's not relying on me to nag him out of bed, thanks be to the sweet baby Jesus. Three weeks in and so far so good.
In discussing this with LoLa, I recognized that in general, Mr. J responds well to pressure. In fact, he thrives on it. He is at his best when everything is going to hell around him. And this is a bit of a stress point in our marriage, because I am not someone who likes to let things go to where catastrophic failure is a real possibility.
Faced with a situation where he has to act or disaster will ensue, you can count on Mr. J to save the day. He will always sink the free throws when the game is on the line. If he'll pardon me the UK analogy, he's a Harrison twin. But (no disrespect to the Harrisons) he is also the player who caused the team to need a game-winning free throw, because he was distracted on defense and dawdled around on the shot clock and seemed like he was sleepwalking through the whole first half.
It was easier to let Mr. J do his own thing when it was just the two of us. Now that we are raising children, I feel obliged to, you know, not fuck them up. So I backstop him, and that makes him lazy. Probably if I were willing to let Mr. J almost-fail more often, he would do better at taking responsibility for our household, family, life ... but I might have a coronary from the stress. I'm thinking there's a zen koan in here somewhere.
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