I can do it… No Problem.
Yep, drop them off… I can handle it.
Sure, he only eats Vegan, and only if the fruits and veggies have actually fallen from the tree? Sure bring him home for dinner. Nope, no, I will cook.
Absolutely! I can certainly work the fair/show/event/game/fill in the blank….
I never complained. I just Stepford wife’d along.
I was raised that way. My mother seemed to have more hours in the day than anyone I know. When we were young, she was insistent that after we played, we needed to come home and bathe, and not be dirty when daddy came home. We would come home and play and get ready to greet daddy. She, with an amazing meal cooking in the background, and a screwdriver ( orange juice and vodka, not the weapon or household tool) in one hand and a freshly cracked open can of Planter’s Peanuts in the other. We would be freshly scrubbed and clean, in house play clothes for my father.
He worked hard.
He should come home to the sweet smells of yummy food, cleansing drink, salty peanuts and clean children. Is it any wonder I am so seriously messed up. My mother taught me subservience, not self reliance.
She asked if she could use the check book. She asked for just about everything except permission to breathe. It was the time. I know it. He was good to her.
He made good money. Her purses matched her shoes, which matched her gloves. Always. When she died, I found her beautiful leather gloves delicately wrapped in layers of tissue paper, as if from a store. It wasn’t enough to have brown gloves for the brown bags. My father knew cocoa brown from tan from chocolate brown. He loved her. She loved him, but there was an obedience there that I could never master. The “what will your father say”, is a phrase that makes me choke. She said it to invoke fear. Strangely, she was the one that I always feared, not him. She would scream to get us in line. He brought presents, and ran the money side of our lives. She feared something, though I don’t know what. He never hit her. He never yelled. Maybe she just feared failure.
He was the good one; she was the one who kept us in line for fear of her failure.
This is something I could never learn.
I analyze and think. I probably over think most things.
Lately, I have wondered if the lessons I learned from her are the reasons for some of my failures in relationships. I could play that role, but I was never good at it. For me, the stay at home mom was half of the picture, rather than a supportive role. In my heart, I always knew that the role that I played was more than an assistant to the boss. I perceived myself to be just as important. Sadly, I never spoke up. Instead, I conveyed to my husband, that I was the supportive assistant, and I deserved to be seen in that role. I never believed it in my heart, but I tried to play the part I was taught.
I look around and try to categorize couples…. happy, not happy, trying to keep up with the Jones’ etc…
I live in an affluent area, and I take note of the local advertisements. Wanted: someone to wrap my gifts. I am too tired from shopping, lol. Wanted: local place to buy a cooked turkey for Thanksgiving… Wanted: Someone to pick up my kids from school, I don’t get home from tennis until 4.
Years ago, I would have judged these women. Wrap your own damn gifts… cook your own holiday turkey… and ok, I still do kind of judge on that last one.
The new me, or at least the new thought process is, more power to you, if you can get away with it. Subservience got me no where. My mom would die all over again if she read this. Sorry mom, but cooking a turkey doesn’t make me a better wife or mother.
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