英语阅读：A Hand to Hold_美文_双语阅读-查字典英语网

英语阅读：A Hand to Hold

As a thirty-something, stay-at-home mom, I relish the opportunity to talk with other women my age and swap stories about our young children. However, when the topic turns from life in the preschool carpool line to complaints about spouses, I become uncharacteristically mute. Stories of husbands who do not equally contribute to child care or housework are commonplace. The same holds for the husbands who travel for days (weeks, months . . . ) on end and have little energy left over for romance or family.

After seven years of marriage, I now realize that I am an especially lucky woman!

My husband, Allen, once an executive with all the pressures of long commutes, business trips, and the very real possibility of transferring across the country, away from my close-knit extended family, made the difficult decision to resign from his high-powered job. He now owns his own small business in our hometown. Instead of executive perks, he now gets to see the perky antics of our two little girls as we eat lunch together every day. Rather than coming home from work after 7:00 pm, Allen is home like clockwork for our nightly six o’clock family dinner. Like every household with young children, much work is left for the post-dinner hour. We draw baths, read stories, and wash the dishes. Instead of retreating to the world of ESPN or pretending to tinker with something “manly in the garage or basement, my husband is right by my side as we complete the nightly household tasks.