A week or so ago, I called my youngest, soon to be seven, and asked him to take my plate and cup to the kitchen. It was a Saturday midmorning, and I had just finished my breakfast and was busy watching something underwhelming on TV.
“Mum why don’t you do anything?” he asked as he picked the plate and cup and headed to the kitchen. His tone wasn’t rude, neither was he complaining, it was simply an innocent question from a child that had been sent by his mother so many times, yet it was not afternoon yet. After he asked me that question, I noticed his two elder siblings, who were within earshot, give each other a meaningful look. I did not require anyone to tell me that it meant, “Yes mum, why are you always sending us?”
I laughed self-consciously, and said sheepishly, “But I also do things for you…”
But that question made me realise that without knowing it, I had turned into my mother, who would call you from another room to get her something that was within reach. All she need have done was stretch her hand and she would get hold of the item she wanted. It is something my siblings and I would joke about and sometimes talk about in frustration. To make matters worse, this would happen multiple times a day. Sometimes, we would be sent to get her something from her bedroom eight times within the same hour, and one would wonder why she couldn’t just ask for all those things at the same time.
Thinking back to that childhood experience, I realised that to some extent, I was subjecting my children to the same thing. Many times, I have sent one of them to get me something from another room, say my phone, handbag or charger, only to realise that I have them with me, sometimes right where I’m seated, after which I call them back.
I recalled this time that I sent my daughter so many times, she got tired of it and called me out. “Muuuum!” she exclaimed, and I had to apologise. In our day, you of course could not afford to protest, because that would have been perceived as disrespectful, so we persevered with the endless, totally unnecessary summons or sneaked away from home to play with friends. Of course I still send my children, but now I’m more conscious about it and do it within reason. Lest they get so tired of me and decide to run away from home…
Another way I’ve turned into my mother is doing last minute cleaning when I’m expecting visitors. Not that my home is dirty, but when I’m hosting, that is when my sense of sight heightens and I see cobwebs and smudges on the walls or curtains that had been invisible before. You should see me in a flurry of activity, scrubbing, washing and wiping as if my life depended on it. And yes, I enlist my children. It is also then that I remember I need more spoons, or that I have only three glasses left because all the others broke, or that I need new serving spoons.
This was the same scenario at home during my childhood, visitors were an incentive to clean and tidy up, not just inside the house, but the compound too, which we were made to weed and sweep. We resented it because it was a lot of work which we were expected to start and finish on the same day the visitors were expected. Why not do it throughout the year to avoid the inconveniencing knee-jerk reactions? We would wonder amongst ourselves since we couldn’t loudly voice our displeasure.
My childhood experiences aside, my consolation is that I know that I am not the only one with this puzzling malady because once in a while, I am a visitor too in other people’s homes. The last place a group of us visited, it was obvious that the home, inside and out, had been repainted, and that the host had built a new outdoor toilet in our honour…
