Dear Slaving Housewife

If you had a colleague who behaved like that, I would advise you to put in your papers. If you had parents who behaved like that you would lose no time in getting out from under as soon as you could but one can never figure out what happens to you with marriage. You take so much crap and you are expected to eat it with a fork and spoon and say “yum”. 

There are those who are dismissive of their wives because they are housewives. Housewifery is a highly skilled profession. You have to deal with situations of life and death, literally. You have to sleep with one eye open and one ear cocked even in your deepest sleep. 

Especially in your deepest sleep because that’s when the shit really happens with babies and young children. That’s when fevers rise, convulsions happen, coughing fits that end in projectile vomiting and worse vomiting that just overflows like a lab experiment gone wrong, when the child is sleeping on his back. He could choke and die on his own vomit, so the housewife’s antennae are finely tuned to every slight change in the normal sounds of the night. 

You do all this, wake bright and early, face washed and clean, make breakfast, whle making lightning calculations of what has to be done and when, a tight schedule which has to be flexible enough to fit in last minute emergency situations and acts of God.

There’s no peace after the animals troop off to school, college and office. You have to wash the breakfast things, sort out lunch and dinner requirements, get ready for the daily grind of picking up clothes, shoes, books, and assorted stuff that the animals left behind. You have to start cleaning, dusting, mopping, polishing, then cooking; they come back for lunch, but if you are lucky they all troop in from 5 onwards.

You have to get tea ready and it has to be high tea because the animals are hungry and determined to tell you what happened during the day if they are young and trusting enough. The older ones who think you are a glorified servant ignore you and go up to their rooms to get online and chat with their friends. Time to get dinner ready, it has to be flawless, because the man of the house has been putting his arse out there to earn money to feed you and your children. He eats it like it has been slightly poisoned.

 And then it’s time to clear up after the animals have been fed, they rush off to do important things, like listen to the news, do homework, download all the episodes of a 10-year serial. You clear up, wash, dry, stack away, wipe, keep things out for breakfast tomorrow, get ready for bed. He’s there with a glint in his eye. This is the only time he makes eye contact with you and actually smiles. That’s because he’s going to get laid and you think… 

Well I don’t know what the wife thinks… But I think after slogging the entire fucking day, with no word of appreciation and no salary, no time off and no sick leave, she still has to get fucked? The next morning it starts over again. All over again until death do them part.