“You’ll throw your back out,” the Target shopper told me. I was dragging Peter to the car mid-fit. Did she think I ought to give him the Oreos just to keep him quiet? 

“You’ll throw your back out,” the movers cautioned. I was carrying a single dining room chair to my own living room. What kind of wuss stands around while other people work?

“You’ll throw your back out,” my daughter chided. I was heaving boxes of books from upstairs bedroom to downstairs living room. Who else was going to do it? 

Sure enough, during this, my fifteenth move, I finally threw my back out. I do so love to prove everyone else right. In between applying cold packs and heating pads and medication, I kept hobbling around the commissary. Driving the little guy to school. Pulling dishes out of boxes when no one was looking.

That made my mother madder than mad. “You’ve got to take it easy on yourself,” Mom scolded on the phone. “All those boxes don’t have to be emptied right away.”

I hooted at that one. “That is so rich coming from you, Mom.” I said.  She used to be a military wife herself. “I can’t think of one time I’ve seen you take it easy on yourself. Even when we all had the flu at the same time I remember that you shuffled into my room in your nightgown and cleaned up where I’d gotten sick.”

“Well, who else was going to do it?” she huffed. 

“No one. But I remember being glad to see you there. Like all was right with the world.”

We both chewed on that for a while. The whole women-who-do-too-much thing sure wasn’t invented by my generation. Even though a slew of books came out in the '80s and '90s about this very subject, we military wives don’t seem to be slowing down in any way. We’re always just past the point of doing too much.  Even when husbands do housework and kids fold laundry, there is a little bit more we’ve got to put on that list. Why is that? 

I’ve spent this past few days flat on my back thinking about this very thing. I don’t think that it is just about learning to say no. It isn’t about farming out more chores or buying more quick foods or getting household help.

I think when you get right down to it, it is all about vision.  Every woman I know has some kind of inner vision about what a family ought to be, how a home ought to be run.

In my own family, I’m not hunting for godliness. I’m not even bent on cleanliness. I’m just thinking that tomatoes should not rot on the counter. Glasses should not congregate in bedrooms like there was a cocktail party in there last night. Firemen ought to be able to find the bedrooms without navigating through 162 boxes. 

When I am at the top of my game, that pretty much happens. Things go according to my central vision.  It is when I am off my game, laid up, hurt, out for the season, that I see how I’m the one making the vision work. Even though I have good kids and a sweet husband, if I’m out of commission too long, everything starts running just a little bit out of whack. Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe that’s a privilege.

So I don’t want to be yelled at for throwing my back out in the service of my family. Instead I want the world to realize that there is a method in my madness. That I have a vision for this family and the kind of people I am trying to raise. If I throw my back out proving it, well, they’ve got drugs for that. And those new ThermaCare heatwraps work a treat.