Bound to Happen in QUOTIDIEN

It was a long twelve hour shift yesterday. People coming, people going -smiles and frowns - push back from clients who both want and despise working in a secured building.

On my way home at 19:00, I get a message from the realtor that someone wants to see the house between 18:30-19:30 tonight. The house was for sale long before Dave passed away.

I come through the door to find that dishes are still in the dish rack. I have three loads of laundry to do, and the bed to make in the spare bedroom. The kitchen table is buried under paperwork, and my daughter is asleep because she's had a bad day. And then, there's the back patio (20'x8') that is covered in cottonwood sprouts and decaying leaves that desperately need shoveled away. The water bill, which I totally missed last month (and was behind one month), needs paid, so I must drop that off before bed. Dave used to take care of all this.

I'm tired, and I realize that I won't get to eat dinner until 21:00.

So, I wake up my daughter and tell her I need some help. Takes her 10 minutes to get out from under my new bedspread, which I insist must not be used as a blanket, dammit.

She is grouchy at having been awoken, and my temper is in short supply. I can't see my way out of the tunnel it's so long!

She finally picks up what amounts to another load of laundry, then heads back to the couch. I'm afraid, at this point, to even ask her to scoop the litter, knowing the response I will get, but I ask, with a please hanging on the end for good measure.

'Mom, they're not showing the house until tomorrow. I'll do it after school. I get off early.'

She's 14 and grieving, too. But, I also know how this promise will play out - and given that I won't be home until these people leave, I will have no opportunity to make sure the house is, at least, presentable. The desired peace of mind that it will be ready for public viewing dictates that it must be done, now.

I am only half of a tag team, these days - and I resent the hell out of my husband who has left me here with a daddy's girl while he's off playing harpsies with cherubs. It would have served him right had I gone first, you know. Of course, he would probably have had a heart-attack with the pressure of conflict and work, and grief.

I scream at my daughter telling her that grief or no, I was done pulling the train alone. She wants for nothing and I have been gentle, but I am at the end of my rope. If I get run down, there is no one there to pick up the slack. If I get too tired to swim, I am fated to drown.

After I threw the rules at her, and made promises of shutting off her phone and reconsidering this vacation she wants to go on (with family) while I stay home and work to pay bills, I left the room - ashamed, spent, and feeling very sad, lonely and bitter.

There were no apologies, no promises of doing better - but after an hour or so, AM comes out of the spare bedroom with junk to throw out. Both her room and the spare are now ready to show.

There is clutter in the bathrooms, but I'm done, and so is she.

She cracks the first joke as we sit on separate couches. Like her father, the action taken is the voice of her apology. I smile - not so much at the funny, but at the 'David' look in my daughter's eyes, and all is forgiven.