As a working mother, I often hear female friends and colleagues say they need a wife. I nod and try not to blush when I confess that I have one: my husband.
We celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary this month, an occasion marked by the realization that at some point in the years since we married we switched sides.
I didn't notice at first. He did the cooking because he loved to. He experimented with sauces and food combinations and even made vegetables so edible that I was enjoying them regularly for the first time in my life. I could barely boil water and had no desire to learn.
He did the grocery shopping because he knew what he wanted on hand for his special style of making meals. I bought the wrong rice -- who knew there were so many kinds?
He did the laundry because he liked his shirts treated a particular way that I couldn't seem to get right.
He took our son to day care, then later to school, because his schedule was more flexible than mine.
In short, he did it all because he did it better and was better able to do it. Sound familiar?
It occurred to me that we had completely reversed roles as I was telling someone I had just met about our household division of labor.
"He does all the grocery shopping, cooking, the laundry. He shuttles our son around, he even picks up my dry cleaning," I said proudly.
And then it dawned on me. If I were a man describing a woman this way, most people would consider me sexist and selfish. So, why is it acceptable for a woman to allow her husband to shoulder the load so completely? Why is one scenario chauvinistic and the other liberated?
Is it really fair to ask someone to give so much, whether that person is a man or a woman? Isn't a marriage a partnership? How can two people be partners when one is carrying so much more of the load?
I guess my answer is that we all have our burdens to bear, and even though mine is not the traditional one, that doesn't mean it isn't just as heavy.
I'm too grateful to resent my husband for perfecting a role I can't even contemplate, but there are many days when I would love to change places with him.
I race from one responsibility to the next, while he lingers over coffee in the morning, playing solitaire.
He has time to be patient, attentive, and an exceptional listener. I e-mail with friends constantly in fits of abbreviated shorthand that only we can decode, but I rarely see them. He spends long periods on the phone with friends he occasionally meets for lunch.
I shop from catalogs, the Internet, in airports. He spends the afternoon going from store to store looking for shoes, a shirt, a pair of pants.
He also has his limits. He doesn't clean the house, buy presents for anyone but me, send holiday cards, pay bills, or enroll our son in classes, camp or soccer. When it comes to logistics, I'm still the keeper of the calendar.
He has been able to pursue his professional goals by freelancing, something that wouldn't be possible if not for my lucrative career, which his support makes possible.
And he cherishes the time he has with our son, who has a role model unlike any other. Our son has no idea that in other houses, the mom is the one serving up the homemade biscuits while the dad calls to say he's running late.
Still, at the end of the day, when I walk through the door, my husband always asks how my day was and I always ask what's for dinner.
In our family, my husband gets to bake his cake and eat it, too, and I'm happy to consume whatever crumbs are left. Maybe someday he'll share his recipe with me and I'll learn the secret ingredient to being a better spouse.
This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.