Married to the House

By Amira Abou-Taleb

As I sat at the doctor's office brainlessly filling out all the forms that had been handed to me, I quickly answered all the questions until I got stumped by one seemingly simple one; line 13 of the form was asking for my occupation. I searched the listed options to see where I fit, going down the list including professional, managerial, secretarial, student, all the way till it just said "Other." Well I didn't exactly fit into any of the choices. Furthermore, I was offended by the word "Other", which made me feel as if I was some type of an outcast or at the very least a marginalized member of an – otherwise – productive society. There was a blank space available for "Others" to fill in, but I was not about to write in the word housewife. After all, I'd rather be marginalized but possibly intelligent, then to describe myself as married to a house. Such an amazing role should not be reduced to such a demeaning term.

Evidently, the stumped look was clear to my eight year old daughter Sara, who asked me if I was ok. I realized that I had spent way too much time on forms and neglected to help her with her math homework as agreed. While explaining multiplication, I noticed that my oldest daughter (Lila, 14) seemed unusually sad and quiet. I gave Sara some practice work and subtly started a light conversation with Lila. I soon realized that Lila was tormented by the fact that her best friend Nadia had moved with her family to live abroad. We talked about their fun days together and I found myself sharing with her friendship stories that date 30 years back. We discussed the quality of relationships vs. the quantity of friends and how technology today makes separation almost impossible. The adventures of making new friends, and the magic that might lie within that, were also areas of our discussion. In the meantime Sara had memorized the times table and was off playing with her little sister Hana who is now four.

Within a few minutes I had an angry Hana and a crying Sara in front of me. Of course each had her own story of "exactly" what had happened, and in each one the person telling the story seemed to have done nothing wrong. So I handed Lila a piece of paper and asked her to start writing a letter to Nadia, which made her feel better, and I started on the case of the "two victims." With the help of "logic" they attempted to repeat their individual stories in a way that made more sense.

It turned out that Sara had allowed Hana to play with one of her toys but when she wanted it back, Hana wouldn't hand it over, so Sara grabbed it. So in reality we had one "not sharing" conviction and one "grabbing" conviction. We were talking about the different ways they could have both behaved when the nurse came and said the doctor was ready to see us.

Following a 3.5 minute chat/check, the doctor simply agreed with the treatment I had already been giving my daughter and we were ready to leave. Oops, not before I turned in that dreaded form with the blank line still staring at me. So I decided to do the office a favor and list only the roles I'd played in the past hour, so in the blank line I wrote: teacher, psychologist, negotiator, judge, driver, and doctor! That afternoon was an eye-opener for me.