Role Reversal in the Holy Land
I'm not a control freak, really I'm not. I'm really a pretty laid back person, ask anyone - except my husband. OK, maybe I am a bit of a control freak but for very good reason. I want everything to be done the way I want it to be done. That doesn't mean I'm a perfectionist though, I just like things to be ordered, not necessarily spotless, just tidy. I'm certainly not that mom scrubbing the kitchen cupboards down with meths; I'm that mom drinking it!
Our recent immigration has presented new challenges but money is not one of them. Money is an old challenge, one that's been part of our dynamic since I rejected the idea of contraception and married a man sorely lacking in a MBA, and now to add fuel to the fire we are trying a role reversal. I did the first twenty years and now it's his turn.
The playing field is pretty even because as things stand I'm not earning any money, but my housewife skills even back then, when we first started out were noticeable better than his. Now he's communicating with underpaid teachers, under aged postal workers and overworked secretaries - in a language he neither speaks nor understands; but to be fair I was pregnant, nursing and sleep deprived for fifteen of my twenty years, so that pretty much puts us on par.
The thing that really gets me is that nothing ever gets done along the way; there's an end goal and it gets reached but along the way, if you'd only pick up the socks and drop them in the laundry and let the cat out and close the dishwasher and fill it with powder and press start ...it's on the way!!! It makes no sense that you wouldn't just see it and do it, you're literally right there.
There is no forethought and no organisation and when it comes to the children there is little compassion and even less food. Am I being too demanding? I come upstairs from my office. The pantry is open before an empty chair some hungry child has stood on, to remind me that my umbilical cord still pulses with healthy guilt. The potatoes are out, five scattered along the kitchen bench top awaiting a future fate. I heard talk of hot fried chips for lunch, but that was before everyone mysteriously disappeared. Carrots spread with crusted Miso sit drying in a bowl on the kitchen table, and assorted empty packets of corn chips, spill out of the garbage onto the kitchen floor.
Yesterday I took a break from work and while feeding the cat I stumbled upon an old tin plate which I thought would sit well on the wooden shelf by the front door. When I brought it inside to wash, I found the kitchen sink full of dirty plates, which I furiously stacked on top of the crusty pots from the night before and wondered about the ingenious way in which the Almighty fashioned 'man'.
I am reminded of a joke. Man says to G-d "Why did you make women so beautiful?""So you would love her" G-d replies. "But why did you make her so stupid?" Man continues, "So she would love you."
Housework is cyclic. The washing has to go in the machine in the morning, be hung in the afternoon, folded and put away at night so a new load can be done at night ready to be hung the next morning before everyone wakes in need of breakfast and school lunch, shoes and permission notes. Dinner also has to be thought about in the morning and children have to be thought about throughout the day, not all day but from time to time, especially around pick up time when they all get out from four different campus's at the same time. Some forethought is required. They also need to be FED!
The house is silent. I can't imagine he's taken them all to the supermarket to stock up for the week's meals and snacks - that's what I would have done. Then we would have come home, the children happily bouncing off the walls from junk food whose ingredients I can neither read nor understand. I would unpack the shopping in neat categories in the pantry and start cooking dinner. I imagine they are at the park, cold and hungry. I make myself a cup of tea and contemplate our future. I don't think this is going to work.
I put the potatoes in to bake, clean up the carrots, and wash the dishes. I don't think he will ever be the housewife I once was, and I will probably never earn enough to keep us, still I think it's been a healthy exercise. I'm a better mother than I am a father and he's a better dad than mom. The dog barks ahead of the arriving crowd, they storm in flushed from an afternoon on the windy sandbanks of the local beach. "I'm starving" the little ones say in unison, tearing their shoes off leaving neat little piles of sand on the rug which they will try rub out with their feet when they notice. "What's for dinner mum?" the teenager asks. Some things never change.
Our recent immigration has presented new challenges but money is not one of them. Money is an old challenge, one that's been part of our dynamic since I rejected the idea of contraception and married a man sorely lacking in a MBA, and now to add fuel to the fire we are trying a role reversal. I did the first twenty years and now it's his turn.
The playing field is pretty even because as things stand I'm not earning any money, but my housewife skills even back then, when we first started out were noticeable better than his. Now he's communicating with underpaid teachers, under aged postal workers and overworked secretaries - in a language he neither speaks nor understands; but to be fair I was pregnant, nursing and sleep deprived for fifteen of my twenty years, so that pretty much puts us on par.
The thing that really gets me is that nothing ever gets done along the way; there's an end goal and it gets reached but along the way, if you'd only pick up the socks and drop them in the laundry and let the cat out and close the dishwasher and fill it with powder and press start ...it's on the way!!! It makes no sense that you wouldn't just see it and do it, you're literally right there.
There is no forethought and no organisation and when it comes to the children there is little compassion and even less food. Am I being too demanding? I come upstairs from my office. The pantry is open before an empty chair some hungry child has stood on, to remind me that my umbilical cord still pulses with healthy guilt. The potatoes are out, five scattered along the kitchen bench top awaiting a future fate. I heard talk of hot fried chips for lunch, but that was before everyone mysteriously disappeared. Carrots spread with crusted Miso sit drying in a bowl on the kitchen table, and assorted empty packets of corn chips, spill out of the garbage onto the kitchen floor.
Yesterday I took a break from work and while feeding the cat I stumbled upon an old tin plate which I thought would sit well on the wooden shelf by the front door. When I brought it inside to wash, I found the kitchen sink full of dirty plates, which I furiously stacked on top of the crusty pots from the night before and wondered about the ingenious way in which the Almighty fashioned 'man'.
I am reminded of a joke. Man says to G-d "Why did you make women so beautiful?""So you would love her" G-d replies. "But why did you make her so stupid?" Man continues, "So she would love you."
Housework is cyclic. The washing has to go in the machine in the morning, be hung in the afternoon, folded and put away at night so a new load can be done at night ready to be hung the next morning before everyone wakes in need of breakfast and school lunch, shoes and permission notes. Dinner also has to be thought about in the morning and children have to be thought about throughout the day, not all day but from time to time, especially around pick up time when they all get out from four different campus's at the same time. Some forethought is required. They also need to be FED!
The house is silent. I can't imagine he's taken them all to the supermarket to stock up for the week's meals and snacks - that's what I would have done. Then we would have come home, the children happily bouncing off the walls from junk food whose ingredients I can neither read nor understand. I would unpack the shopping in neat categories in the pantry and start cooking dinner. I imagine they are at the park, cold and hungry. I make myself a cup of tea and contemplate our future. I don't think this is going to work.
I put the potatoes in to bake, clean up the carrots, and wash the dishes. I don't think he will ever be the housewife I once was, and I will probably never earn enough to keep us, still I think it's been a healthy exercise. I'm a better mother than I am a father and he's a better dad than mom. The dog barks ahead of the arriving crowd, they storm in flushed from an afternoon on the windy sandbanks of the local beach. "I'm starving" the little ones say in unison, tearing their shoes off leaving neat little piles of sand on the rug which they will try rub out with their feet when they notice. "What's for dinner mum?" the teenager asks. Some things never change.
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