Q: Do you and Brenda share the household chores?
A: When she was raising the boys, she nursed them both, so she did all the housework. I played with the kids, took them for walks, changed them, bathed them.
But she cooked, washed dishes, and cleaned house. Washed the clothes.
I worked for wages and wrote after work. I typed up what I wrote in my head at work.
When she put the kids in nursery school and went back to work, I helped with the housework. I did the shopping, some of the cooking, some of the laundry, most of the cleaning. She washed the dishes.
By then I had a job with a desk and a typewriter and could write at work.
Q: When did you start doing the dishes?
A: When I moved to
Now, I work full-time, but temporary, and do most of the housework.
Brenda works full-time, permanent, and leaves the housework to me.
She cooks once in a while, and unloads or loads the dishwasher once in a while, and does her own laundry, and will gives me a shopping list, if she wants to cook something special.
If we take care of the grandchildren I take them to the park, the library, or the junior museum and she bathes them and dresses them and makes sure they take a nap.
Neither one of us sits around while the other one works.
I write at the house all day when I am at the house.
It may not seem like work to someone who has a job but it’s work, it’s tiring, it’s demanding. Think of when you were in school and had to write a term paper. Was that work?
Think of doing that for a living. For a job.
Could you do it?
That’s what I’m doing. And I don’t get paid.
Would you do it if you didn’t get paid?
For how long? Ten years? Twenty years? Forty?
Q: Monk’s wife Nellie supported him. He was the houseperson in the home.
A: Yes. He practiced, composed, kept his chops up.
Monk couldn’t have done it without Nellie.
She supported him. Brenda supports me.
Q: But you do your part. Like Monk did.
A: I do my part.