Is There Still Sex in the City?

Max peeled back the flap on the tent.

I peeked inside. The tent wasn’t waterproof and was now strewn with wet clothes. Meaning a morning’s worth of laundry.

“Okay guys!” I said, trying to inspire them in my determined-­to-be-cheerful coaching voice. “Why don’t you take out all your clothes and carry them to the porch and then I can get started washing them.”

Max glared. He informed me that he was going to use this as a teachable moment about lightning and wet tent safety and I should go away.

Thirty minutes later, I went back out to check on them. They’d done nothing. I didn’t know what they had been doing, but it wasn’t taking their wet clothes to the porch.

“Hey,” I said. “Can you guys get to it?”

Max suddenly had a hissy fit. “I wasn’t aware that you were running this place like a factory. I was in the middle of discussing something with my son.”

“And that would be fine,” I retorted. “If I didn’t potentially have four loads of laundry ahead of me.”

I stormed back to my office, furious.

Kids and men have many common traits. Such as: Starting a project and not finishing it. Leaving messes for other people to clean up. Not understanding “messes” or what constitutes one.

And all of this is probably okay, unless you are playing the caretaking role in the relationship. Which means you are mothering, you are cleaning up, you are silent, you are putting others first along with their needs, even if—and especially if—their “needs” require that you spend less time on your needs.

In other words, you have volunteered to make yourself a second-class citizen. Meaning: A person whom no one ever thanks. Who does the really hard stuff. And who is little appreciated. Women, as far as I’m concerned, should take away Mother’s Day from the male-run hearts-and-flowers companies that make millions on our sympathies and put it back in the hands of the actual mothers. Who could use some actual help.

Five minutes later, after mentally cursing Max, he brought in a pile of wet laundry and helped me load it into the washer.

I reminded myself to take a deep breath. Everything was going to be fine.

On my way back to work, I saw that Max had left the extra sandwich on the table. I stole a little piece of bacon and thought that perhaps this would be a good day after all.

I had peace for three minutes.

“Oh no,” Max shouted.

“What?” I said, rushing out.

“Your dog ate my sandwich!”

Day Fifteen

Was it really the end of the month? How had so much time passed? And so much emotion?

At 2:00 p.m. on a sunny Sunday afternoon, Max and I were perched gingerly on the edge of a high bleacher, waiting for the boy to get an award from the sports camp. I could tell the other parents were old hands at this, this game watching. They sat in the middle of the bleachers in a huddle, and they knew not just their own kid’s name but the names of the other kids as well. If I’d had kids, I suppose this would have been my life, too—sitting around green spaces wearing baseball caps and being

part of a family. The parents all seemed very nice—there’s something about kids that makes most adults behave—but they were also at least a decade younger than Max and me, with faces that still had that hopeful glow that all this was going to make sense someday.

Me and Max, we stood out.

We didn’t know where to sit. Or what to do.

Not being an actual parent, I assumed the real parents didn’t have this problem. I envied the fact that their lives had a pattern. Predictable, perhaps, but also comforting. Because when you have kids, you know what you’re supposed to do with your life. You know what’s supposed to happen and when.

If you’re childless and single, you don’t have the pattern. You don’t know how it’s supposed to go down. And so, while I was waiting for the coach to call the boy’s name, I was a nervous wreck.

What if he calls the boy’s name last? What if he forgets and doesn’t call his name at all? And what if he runs out of trophies before he gets to the boy? My heart would break.

I think I need to have words with that coach. I think I need to give him a little pop on the snout.

“Hey!” I shouted.