thankful anxiety
Twenty five years ago, I was working in radio news. I worked the Thanksgiving holiday. My husband called the station to tell me that while I had sprayed the oven with cleaner the night before, I had not cleaned it. His mother was in the kitchen complaining. I said I would happily quit my job and come home and clean the oven if the three adults in the house that morning couldn’t do it but that I couldn’t anchor and produce and clean the oven.
That was twenty five years ago.
I haven’t had issues with Thanksgiving dinner oven cleaning since.
The grocery store makes better dinner than I do. My husband is the better grocery shopper than I am. I do clean the house better than he does. No forced pot scrubbing. No forced cooking. No forced tradition.
Now that I am a college professor, I catch up on grades over the Thanksgiving holiday in preparation for final exams in two weeks. It is a tedious time. Students give me considerable power over their futures asking for meetings where they will plead for grades they didn’t earn. I don’t bend while they bend my ear. They are responsible for their grades. This responsibility causes them such anxiety. They don’t like being responsible for their future. They are much more comfortable blaming me for their sh
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