I recently happened to come across an interview that the late Aretha Franklin did a couple of years ago.
The interviewer asked her what her biggest challenge was, and he was lost for words when she said that her biggest headache was trying to figure out what to cook for dinner.
He and the audience had probably expected her to talk about the challenges she encountered making her music, but no, the great Aretha Franklin’s biggest headache in life was figuring out what to cook.
If you are a woman and you are reading this, you probably relate to this, because truth be told, there is nothing as maddening and exasperating as figuring out what to feed your family every day, from breakfast, lunch to supper.
I once tried a Monday to Sunday timetable but quickly realised that it was impractical, since sometimes, the ingredients needed on a particular day will have run out.
Before I had children, I rarely cooked, and if I returned home from work and was feeling really hungry, I would take a cup of hot water with a banana of any other fruit that happened to be in the house. Or a piece of bread, if the bread hadn’t gone bad.
And then the children came along, and I couldn’t possibly feed them water, could I? Hence began this headache that every woman with a family suffers for the rest of her life.
Being a working mother, I have done my best to empower my house help to make certain decisions whenever I am not around, including decisions relating to food.
Over the weekend, I create time to shop for foodstuff so that weekdays are taken care of, but still, once in a while, she will call me at work to ask what to make for supper, a question that I dread.
Speaking of phone calls from these very important individuals in our lives called house managers, if there is a phone call I pick at the first ring, it is my house help’s. It doesn’t matter what I am doing, I will immediately stop it and answer her phone call.
If I am in a meeting with my boss, I will plead an emergency, quickly excuse myself and walk out to pick her phone call. She doesn’t know it, but she is my boss, not the other way round. This is because when I am not there, she takes care of what matters most to me – my children. Again, something that most women can relate to.
Every time she flashes me, my heart skips a beat, but thankfully, all her phone calls have been to ask me to buy something that has run out or to ask me what to cook for supper…
Still on this problematic thing called supper, unlike Aretha Franklin, if I were wealthy, I would hire a live-in chef to get rid of this headache once and for all.
I would even leave the shopping to him, or her, and allow myself to be surprised whenever I sat down to eat, for the rest of my life.
Having someone else to worry about this minor, yet not minor problem would be a big load off my shoulders, an off-loaded responsibility that will finally free me to embark on some important things that I’ve been putting off for a while now.
If you’re a man and you’re reading this, I bet you’re wondering why I’m making a big deal out of nothing, but before you judge or dismiss me, talk to the women in your life.
