I went to get a haircut yesterday and my hairdresser got talking about the endless chore of making lunches for her kids, who are at university. This woman works six days a week, standing on her feet all day. “Why don’t they make their own lunches?” I asked. “They don’t know how,” she began. I looked skeptical. “When I tell them to make their own, they say they’d rather not eat,” she said. Ah yes, the old guilt trip. So she takes their requests, sometimes its noodles or other special Chinese favourites, other times it’s a plain old ham sandwich. One too many ham sandwiches and she hears about it.
I spent a good part of the weekend on schoolwork and another big chunk of it on cleaning my apartment, getting groceries and preparing snacks and lunches for the week. There’s no one else to do it for me and I’m grateful that my mother taught me and my brothers how to cook and “keep house.”
My hairdresser is not making it easy for her future daughter-in-laws, nor for her sons if their wives won’t agree to be their mothers.