The notebook · September 17, 2026

The load nobody gave me

Someone asked me, a fortnight ago, why it is always me.

In my family, when somebody is ill or something goes wrong, I am the one they ring. I pass it on, I call back in the evening, I know who has been told and who has not, I keep the order in which news travels. I have been doing it for years without thinking about it, the way you hold a door.

I answered straight away, and my answer was a good one. I am the one who picks up, I have everybody’s number, I can talk to doctors without losing my temper, and the others live far away in any case. All of it is true. I was rather pleased with myself for about an hour.

What came back afterwards was that the question had not been how I manage it. It was why me. And to that I have nothing. I go looking for the moment I was asked, the sentence, the person, the occasion, and there is nothing there to find. Nobody gave me anything. I took it.

There is a scene in Exodus where someone puts exactly that question to a man who had never put it to himself.

When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he did to the people, he said, “What is this thing that you do for the people? Why do you sit alone, and all the people stand around you from morning to evening?”

Exodus 18:14 (World English Bible)

What holds me in that passage is not the advice that follows. It is the answer Moses gives. He is asked why he is alone, and he explains how the arrangement works: “the people come to me to inquire of God” (18:15), “I judge between a man and his neighbor” (18:16). He answers with a procedure. He never says who gave him the job, and I do not think he knows.

I can see why I am not looking very hard either. A load somebody handed me can be handed back to the person who handed it over, and that takes one sentence. A load I picked up cannot be given back to anyone. It has to be set down, and setting something down is visible.

And then there is the other reason, the one that is harder to say. Being the one they ring is a position. I am not sure what I am in this family if the phone stops ringing at my house first.

Jethro does not tell Moses to stop. He tells him what will happen if others are chosen, one by one, and given something to do: “they shall share the load with you” (18:22). It is in the future tense. I know which names I would choose. I have not rung any of them.

In Manna, one prayer a day, for what you carry and did not choose to carry.