Balancing Acts

It was a cold winter morning in an average American suburb. As Holly vacuumed the living room carpet, her peripheral vision caught a glimpse of the USPS truck in the window. It braked, stopped to load their mailbox, then maneuvered between the parked cars and piles of snow, both obstacles that Holly found unacceptable. Can't they park in their own driveways? And couldn't the snow plowers leave enough space for two cars on the road? She took a deep breath: before she could get the mail, she needed to finish cleaning up the mess from her four year old's latest culinary arts experimentation. Once done, she turned on the television to keep the younger ones occupied, shielded herself against the elements with her heaviest down coat, and finally trudged outside.

She barely had to open the mail box: envelopes overflowed, a few dropping into the snow. Why didn't I bring gloves, she berated herself. Grimacing, she picked up the ones that had fallen and waved off the snow, and she filled her arms with the remainder. Once inside, she did her best to dry off the envelopes, soaked in now-melted snow. She opened each one, finding a new bill each time.

So many bills.

Homeowner fees. Heat. Water. Book club dues. Preschool. Parent-teacher's association. Health insurance. Veterinary fees. Credit cards.

Her heart stopped: two of them were past due. Had her husband missed this last month?

David was brilliant, a math professor at the most prestigious university in the region. They'd jointly agreed to leave him in charge of the finances. After all, David loved numbers. But he was so disorganized. Holly hated going into his office, seeing the messy piles of scribbled notes scattered in between half-read books. It was probably a mistake to add one more thing to his plate. But wasn't Holly's plate full too? Full-time care of three rambunctious little boys, one middle-aged man with an irregular appetite, and an aging dog with persistent health problems? How would she balance it all?

She sighed. Before her first pregnancy, her company's executives relied on her, the best secretary for five years in a row, she remembered fondly, thanks to her expert organizational skills. She would apply her skills here.

Well, after getting dinner on the table.

A few hours later, the kids were fed and quieted, the dog was fed and relieved, but her husband was not yet home. Holly returned to the pile of now-dried envelopes. She first sorted them in chronological order, so that the two past due would be farthest right. She grabbed a notebook, found a blank page, and divided it up into columns: the payer, the balance, the due date. She left space for another blank column: their checking account balance throughout these transactions. The home mortgage payments consumed most of David's earnings. Would they be able to make it through, without dipping into the red?

She'd nearly finished when she noticed that the vet bill was missing. Did the dog eat the vet bill?

The dog was napping: no signs of stomach upset, and no trail of broken paper residue. Holly revisited each envelope, then retraced her steps throughout the house. Unsuccessful, she ventured upstairs, where the kids were fast asleep. On the middle child's dresser, she noticed a tri-fold paper with an evergreen tree scribbled in green and brown crayon. She tiptoed over, kissed her son's forehead, and grabbed the now colorful vet bill on her way out.

She returned to her notebook and chronological bill timeline. This vet bill was due right in the middle of the others. There was no room to insert in her handwritten notebook. Would she have to erase the rest? Would these charges balance out? In the midst of her despair, Holly heard her husband's car enter the garage.

David exited his car slowly, tentatively. For the past three weeks, Holly complained that he was never home in time for dinner with the kids. But what could he do? He needed tenure, they needed tenure, for the house and for the kids and for their retirement plan. His research Q&A ran a full hour over time today; there was bound to be a fight. He tried to open the door quietly, but the old door betrayed him, letting out a loud squeak.

"You're late again," he heard Holly say. Yes, precisely as predicted.

"Did you know we were late on these bills?" Oh great, one more thing done wrong. David continued walking into the darkness, ready to explain his schedule and the traffic and how he tried so hard to come home early but---

"Don't step there! That's the start of the timeline!"

David froze. What timeline? How could he step on a timeline? Bewildered, he stepped back. He finally looked at the floor to see Holly behind a line of papers and envelopes, a post-it label at regular intervals: "November 1979" to "February 1980."

"It took me two hours to organize this and calculate our balances!" Holly held up her notebook columns. "And now I have to figure out what to do about this vet bill - never mind the crayon."

David sidestepped the envelope timeline and approached Holly, placing his arm on her shoulder. He didn't always know when his wife needed comfort, but he could hear Holly holding back a sob. "How can we manage this ourselves?" she whispered. "So many bills. One misplaced transaction, and I have to restart the whole timeline."

Her voice grew louder, faster. "I mean, we're not a bank! We don't keep perfect records; we drop them in the snow! And the dog eats them, and the kids draw crayon over the balances! We're in the so-called modern era, computers are in peoples' homes, and yet to pay the damn bills every month I need post-its and tape..."

David gasped. He stared at Holly, eyes wide. Then he kissed her, reassured her that they'd pay the bills, grabbed her notebook, and ran to his office. He felt the start of an idea, decentralized thoughts in his brain forming new connections. An open ledger, tracking transactions. Records of every step in a timeline, secured, copied, free from the reach of any child or pet. He transferred his thoughts furiously to paper, in the few minutes he had before Holly would remind him of his dinner, long since gone cold.

David and Holly made it out of the red within a year, but it took cryptocurrency decades to catch on. In that time, David published papers, secured tenure, and won awards for his contributions to the field. Holly stood proudly at his side, and she took care that the kids were well-dressed and well-behaved at each ceremony. The newspapers cataloged this new technology, the idea that all transactions could be recorded in a chained timeline, all originating from a single genesis block.

No paper recorded Holly's name. No one noted that her secretarial organization was the genesis of the idea. When David and Holly reached retirement age, and "bitcoin" was suddenly the hottest buzzword, no one would bother to research David's family history. What for? There was nothing glamorous about an American housewife.

At least, she consoled herself, her bills were now set to auto-pay.