A week later, he asked me if I could do another.
I said no.
And you know what happened?
Nothing.
She said:
“It’s okay.
They took care of it.
The world continued to turn.
Those four baskets taught us something that I would have liked we would have understood before:
Work becomes invisible when someone does it so consistently that it seems automatic.
Josh stopped seeing how much Vanessa was carrying because she kept carrying him.
Vanessa stopped seeing what she was asking me because I kept doing it.
And I was so focused on proving that Vanessa was taking advantage of me that I hadn’t realized that she was struggling too.
His difficulty did not justify what he did.
I explained how I got there.
There’s a difference.
Today, when someone in our family needs help, he asks for it instead of taking it.
And when someone says no, no one treats it like an insult.
Most Saturdays, my basement is quiet now.
The washing machine has my clothes.
The dryer has my towels.
And next to them, where before huge bags of dirty clothes appeared from another person every weekend, now there is absolutely nothing.
