TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | JUNE 2020 35
By Hollie Sessoms
There’s an art to staying home. It’s not a matter to be taken lightly. I, for one,
am a master.
I’ve been staying home for 17 years give or take a few months when I tried
to enter the workforce for a spell. As a mother of three active children, it’s
just made sense for me to stay home so I can shuttle the kids around to and
fro whenever their schedule dictates. But why am I trying to justify this? I
don’t even know you!
So, my husband, like many others, went to a work-at-home situation back
in March. He’s home four days a week and at the office one. This has been
quite an…ahem…adjustment…for all of us….
At first it didn’t seem so bad. Of course he’s going to sleep in until 9:00, he
doesn’t have to commute, most people would do the same. But then it got
worse. I started to keep track of how long he’d been in the same pajama
pants. When I brought it up to him, while we were standing out in the front
yard one evening, he shrugged and commented on how comfortable they
were.
Well, I told myself, at least once a week he’s showering and shaving and
going into work. That’s better than nothing. But then his mood started
slipping. He started complaining about how far it was from the bedroom to
the kitchen where his snacks were. Wondering why we don’t all just wear
Depends—wouldn’t it just make life simpler? One night when I told him he
had cheese dip all over his dingy tee shirt, he shrugged and buttoned up his
flannel so the cheese dip didn’t show.
I decided it was time for some stay-at-home rules:
1.You must shower. Sometimes showering seems insane. Where are you
going? Who are you seeing? Does it even matter if your hair is greasy? If a
fine layer of crust has formed on your skin? If you smell? Of course not. You
can’t even smell yourself. All valid points. Even still. You must shower.
2.You must get dressed. I know, I know, but pajamas are so comfortable,
you’re saying. Yes. True. But if one spends too much time in pajamas it
becomes difficult to distinguish day from night and life takes on this twilight
zone feel where you can’t tell where one day ends and the next begins. You
don’t want to get to this point—it’s creepy and weird and the next stage is
existential angst: Why am I even here? What exactly is my purpose in life?
What is life? Not pretty. Get dressed. It doesn’t have to be anything with
buttons and zippers, drawstring is totally acceptable. Just, get dressed.
3.You must eat real food. You would think that staying home would propel
one to cook elaborate meals with all the extra time. But, alas, this is not the
case. You’re home with all the boxes and bags of ready-made food, just there
for the taking. What kind of crazed person would get out pots and pans and
knives and cutting boards when you can merely open a bag of BBQ chips
and have sustenance right at your fingertips? If it weren’t for vanity I would
totally ignore this rule, but my waistline lets me know in no uncertain terms
that this rule must not be broken. Eat real food.
4.You must continue to grow and learn. These are dangerous times. We
have the internet. Endless entertainment at our fingertips. Flamboyant men
with tiger pets, real crime investigations (it’s always the husband), people
yelling about politics—all there for your mindless consumption. But none
of this brings true fulfillment like learning something new. It doesn’t have
to be something huge—I’m not saying become fluent in Mandarin. Start
small: perfect your pie crust, learn to garden, read a biography on Winston
Churchill. There’s a whole world outside of Netflix, once you can tear yourself
away from the “watch next” option.
Hopefully this will help empower husbands everywhere. I envision a time
when, like Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom, my husband takes off the flannel and
throws it into the fire, thus starting a new phase of his life where he’s got his
act together. The woobie, I’ll let him keep….
Zen and the Art of Staying Home