No time to play

I was changing a light bulb recently, when my children said something about their dad doing it. That led to a discussion about what moms and dads do. In our house, I do a lot of things beyond what someone would normally think is the job of the stay-at-home mom. I fix things and paint and build things and, well, you get the drift. But, my oldest doesn't see this as a good trait in a mom. She's not impressed that her mom will fix the leaky sink instead of asking someone else to do it. She doesn't care that her mom will climb a ladder to the roof to repair the sagging gutter. Here is what she said: Dads have more time to play. I took a step back, reeling from the blow. Time to play? I don't play enough? What the heck? Don't I play with you during Brownie meetings? Don't I sit with you and come up with fun crafts and color artistic pictures? Don't I buy you clay and beads and pipe cleaners? Then, I thought about it some more and realized she is right. I don't really just play. There's never really just any lounging and being goofy and doing nothing kind of play. That's what dads are good at. They're good at zoning out in front of the television. They're good at wrestling and tickling. They're good at doing nothing but making it fun. Moms are good at organizing and creating and exploring. I felt a little better once I rationalized it in my own mind, but that won't change the fact that my daughter's idea of fun is different than mine. So maybe tonight, I'll lay on the couch with her, tickle her feet and just make some time to play nothing.