If I Have to Ask
By Adrienne Garrison
@adrie.garrison
Pulling out of my driveway one morning for an OB appointment, I spotted my neighbor and her teenage daughter rolling trash and recycling bins to the curb. They’re nearly the same height now, and in profile they looked startlingly similar with the sun glinting off their short brown hair. I lifted my hand to wave as I drove past and wondered, “Did she have to ask her daughter to help her?” There was something about their identical gaits walking down the drive that allowed me to believe they could be so perfectly in sync, as though the mother had simply taken hold of the first heavy bin and the daughter, without a word passing between them, had taken the second one and followed her to the curb.
Helping without having to be asked was a highly-valued trait in my house growing up. I heard constantly from my dad: “I shouldn’t have to ask. If I have to ask … ” and, honestly, I don’t remember what was said after that point, but it seemed that if he had to ask, the value of the help would be negated somehow. As a teenager, I would automatically begin loading dishes into the dishwasher after dinner as my younger brother automatically cleared them off the table. These small tasks were noticed and praised, but also very much expected of us. Now, as a mom of young children, I have a deep appreciation for the necessity of helping hands. The complex mechanics of keeping a home really is too much for me to manage on my own, and I wonder at what point pitching in will become something my kids innately value and feel responsible for.
But it’s the question of having to ask for help that I wonder about now. How many times have I simmered with resentment because my husband didn’t intuit my need for him to (finally, just please already) take his turn with the dishes? Or felt myself short circuiting about the fact that I seem to be the only adult in the household aware of the impending dinnertime and, for heaven’s sake, can’t he just put some sandwiches out for the kids already?!
If I have to ask, it seems like a favor when anyone helps me, and my pride can hardly bear it. Anger flares. Scores are kept. Doubt creeps in: How did I, an independent woman, find myself in a marriage with such traditional domestic roles? Am I enabling these children by putting on their shoes yet again? Did I overload our schedule? Is it my own fault that the never ending mental list of everything I need to do feels so insistent and unmanageable? I get into these whole tangles about mental load and the unappreciated skill it takes to be this family’s CEO, when actually … all I need to do is ask.
Maybe I just need to ask, and ask, and ask again without falling prey to the idea that if I have to ask, the help given isn’t actually worth receiving.
On the way home from my appointment, I pulled into the donut shop to check an item off my unending mental list of things to do. I had promised to bring donuts home with me, pausing on the way out the door to make sure I knew their order: chocolate sprinkle for Penny and powdered donut holes for Theo.
“And jelly-filled for me,” my husband had said, grinning from where he stood unloading the dishwasher.
I had paused at the door, struck by the fact that I hadn’t been thinking of him at all—I hadn’t even offered. A little flicker of guilt nudged at me, prompting me to thank him for cleaning up breakfast (unasked). He waved me off like it was no big deal, like all that really mattered to him was the jelly-filled donut coming his way.
I found myself wondering again, Is it really that simple? The next day, I decided on my own “jelly donut” and it was this: returning from a writing session to find that the laundry basket of clean kid’s clothes has been magically put away. Before the babysitter arrived, I jotted down a note and left it on the counter with a few requests. Nevermind that our last babysitter looked for little chores like this intuitively, what mattered most was that a few hours later, the writing was done, the kids were happy, and the laundry was completely put away.
Just a few weeks shy of the birth of my third child, the need to ask for help seems to swell along with the rest of me, making me feel ungainly and incapable. And yet, the unending mental list of what needs to be done is not getting any shorter, neither is it automatically rewriting itself onto the mind of the other fully capable adult in our home. We’re fifteen years into marriage and seven years into parenthood, but the telepathic connection between Dan and I isn’t getting any stronger, so I swallow my pride and ask: Will you switch the laundry? Can you carry this upstairs? Could you manage the kids’ baths tonight? Would you pick up an order from Target on your way home? Every time, it gets a little easier. Every time, the answer is yes.
It only took becoming physically incapable of carrying the load alone to realize that having to ask for help isn’t about being weak, or even about being unseen and unappreciated. It’s about acknowledging that I am finite. I have a limit. It’s about having someone to turn to and actually turning to them, sharing the burden of this daily life we live. This week, I texted the grocery app and login info to Dan along with a link to a song we used to love. With sweaty palms, I asked a dear friend whether I could call her to stay with the kids if I went into labor before my mom arrived. I saved Penny and Theo’s favorite weekly podcast for the very special occasion of cleaning up the playroom, and when that didn’t work, I tried not to be bothered by the nagging, bribing, and threatening it took to get the job done with their help. I’m slowly realizing that, when the job is done, I’ll appreciate the end result all the more if I didn’t struggle through it all alone.
Thinking back to my neighbor, it seems more likely to me now that she did ask her daughter to take the other trash bin, or at least had to make this request more often than not. But the synchrony of their two profiles in the morning light was no less lovely in my mind’s eye. Even if she had to ask, she didn’t make the small journey to the end of the driveway on her own, and that is worth something. That is worth so much more than never being brave and honest enough to ask at all.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.