"How Did She Do It?"

So here’s my domestic schedule for the last 24 hours:

• 4 loads of laundry
• 5 loads of dishes
• ripping up the old carpet upstairs
• take the kids to their school BBQ
• change the bedding
• get groceries
• help Ater with his paper route
• help with homework
• dust living room
• rearrange furniture

Now to a typical Mom, this is nothing. But for me … well it kept me hopping. Add to all that the numerous food bank meetings, handling our development programs in Sudan, meeting with London’s emerging leaders, three blogs, writing more paragraphs to the two books I have on the go, and attempting to assist a fledgling African NGO get off the ground, and you can see I’ve had a bit of a hectic day.Today is my wife Jane’s birthday. We’ll sit on the porch swing with our tea and talk about life as we always do. Then I’ll look over at her and recall my hectic schedule and I’ll think, “How did she ever get all these things accomplished when I was in Parliament for almost five years?”Now that I’m home and loving it, I’m gaining a better appreciation of the load she had to carry during those pivotal times. She would drive me to the airport every Monday morning and once we kissed goodbye our days ventured into two opposite directions. I never worked harder in my entire life than I did as an MP – my days began at 5 a.m. and ended at 11 in the evening. There were endless committee meetings, party responsibilities, speeches, policy writing, and events. But in all of it I was part of a team, an extended political family that assisted in carrying the load.Meanwhile Jane was attempting to fulfill all those things listed above, plus help to direct the food bank, oversee our African programs, go through all the homework with the kids, fulfill her church responsibilities, look out for her elderly mother, feeds the cats, get gas for the SmartCar, answer the emails (we get hundreds each day), and then find time to talk to me about my day. I ask again: how did she do it?I pursue my wife – every day. While in Ottawa I phoned her often each day. When back home we found time for a movie. I adore her youthful spirit and her “wise beyond her years” experience gleaned from some brutal sojourns in Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, the Congo, and Bosnia. She serves people endlessly and is greatly loved as a result – much more than me, and that’s rightfully so.To the degree to which politics functions at all it is because of all the spouses – mostly women, sadly – who undertake the major burden of living and loving as a family. MPs and their spouses grow apart when they fall out of sync with one another. When they go to restaurants, everyone wants to speak to the politician, when in reality it only when they function as a true team that the politician can act as a truly humble public servant.Here is to the most remarkable woman I have ever met in my entire life. I have watched her minister to refugees in Darfur and hungry families in London. She sought out and found three remarkable children in the midst of civil war and in the process found much of herself. She lifts the spirit of those she touches, but leaves little for herself at the end of the day. It is an injustice, and as a partner, a helper, an appreciative husband and father, I now have my opportunity to address the injustice not just by taking in a movie, but by taking in the laundry; not just by getting her tea but by preparing the kids lunches; not just by journeying to Africa with her on our great adventure, but by traveling to the grocery store to get some supplies.This is now my life and it is meaningful and fulfilling. I am not only married to a remarkable person, I am also married to her many burdens and I seek to lift some of them from her. I have been away too long; she has carried both of our domestic responsibilities for too long. That’s over now and balance is rediscovered. But on my dying day I will still ask myself how she handled it all in these past few years. It is more than I could have managed. Here’s to all those political spouses who are required to take on the daily burdens of two lives. They are the oil that makes the machinery and working of Parliament possible, and for them all public servants should behave accordingly in respect and cooperation. Thanks to all of them – every single one. And, O yes, Jane, happy birthday – the adventure continues.