April 04, 2008
Married to a Squirt
I just got off the phone with my friend Rose who I haven't seen or talked to in weeks. She has recently been offered a full-time position and, as expected, is now swamped with work. For 30 minutes or so we whine about having too much to do nowadays and too little time left in our hands. For one, if you're living with a male (i.e. husband, son), cleaning becomes a constant and repetitive process. Otherwise your kitchen will look as though you've been living with or raided by cavemen. It so happens that Rose and I both like our kitchens pristine.
I miss having a maid around more than I miss my family, Rose complained. Unfortunately, in addition to having a house to clean, Rose also has a backyard. And a couple of dogs. I didn't have a maid back in the Philippines but I had my mother. And what a luxury it was coming home from work with piping hot breakfast waiting on the table. For about two years before I left for the US in 2006, I was a pampered princess. My mother's words. Not that I didn't do anything at home (I was the cleaning czar - always have been), but I could prop up my feet after work and not worry about dinner. That is singlehood bliss.
On my bus ride home I make a mental inventory of our freezer. Will it be fish tonight, or chicken? Rice or pasta? Shoot, do we have onions left? And since you can't feed your family macaroni and cheese (I found a very good recipe, by the way) every night, cooking demands creativity. That in itself is another challenge. The fact that I have written about the joys - and pains - of cooking more than once on this blog is a testament to this whole new arena called marriage.
Since we are on the topic of whining (which the husband says women are predisposed to), I am currently reading Doris Lessing's "The Cleft." When I grabbed this book from Borders, I didn't even read the back cover to get an idea of what the book was about. "The Cleft" is surprisingly hard to put down and weirdly interesting. It is hard not to feel a little self-conscious when reading it on the train as Lessing throws out the words sex and orgy, plus several obvious metaphors of private parts, page after page. Harder still if you're sitting next to someone reading the Bible in the morning. What is the book all about? Once upon a time the women, the Clefts, ruled the land. And then came along the Squirts, aka the men, and all hell broke loose. Lessing's fictional historical account of our mass population echoes what we have long suspected about each other - women are naggers and men are careless, insensitive and often short in foresight. If you're interested in the battle of the sexes in fishskins, you will probably like this book.