This household currently has thirteen bananas in the kitchen. No one really imagines that we need thirteen bananas. No one really imagines that we will eat thirteen bananas (although I am sighing about the likelihood that I will be making banana bread at some inopportune time this week.) No, the banana excess is a symptom of a larger truth: no one is clearly in charge of shopping. For that matter, this truth is a symptom of a larger pattern: in most areas of family life, no one is clearly in charge.

We do seem to be clear on one thing. No one here really imagines that either Day-Hay or Kat is in charge�at least not for any length of time. I�m sure that they have their moments when they pretend they are in charge. Given their ages, they even have moments when they attempt a coup. The attempts usually fade away when reality strikes and they realize that there are more leadership opportunities with laundry or cleaning around here than with anything really interesting.

In some families, the parental inability to develop clear lines of responsibility would mean that the laundry never got done, the shopping rarely occurred, school notes were left unsigned, and common living areas rarely got cleaned. In this family, the over-abundance of responsibility at the top is more likely to result in occasional times when the clean clothes are re-washed, the larder contains thirteen bananas and an extra gallon of milk, the school discovers double-payment of field trip fees, and the common living areas have gone uncleaned. (Okay, so you got us on this last one, but still....) Teachers who have called and left messages of concern have been known to receive two calls in response.

An efficiency expert would cry upon seeing our lives and my generally organized nature has considered assigning tasks. What stops me is the sense that all this duplication protects us. It is redundancy at its finest. If one of us hasn�t remembered something essential, odds are that the other one has. If one of us is ill, things still get done. If one of us is busy, errands still happen. As we get older and more forgetful, usually at least one of us remembers to do the essentials on any given day.

So, I�ll live with going bananas. It�s a small price to pay.

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