I CAN'T HELP BEING MY MOTHER'S DAUGHTER, BUT I SURE AM GLAD I AM MY HUSBAND'S WIFE


My parents are old school folks. Although I grew up in a double-income family where both my parents worked, my Dad and Mom held very well-defined roles, very customary roles, as husband and wife, mother and father... and so did the children.

My Dad's word was law of the house and he was never popular for mincing them. He will tell it like it is and most of the time it smacked right at the crux. Between the two, he was the martinet for discipline and good behavior and so we grew up overflowing with lessons on filial piety, obedience, honesty, frugality, and closing the doors on our way in and out. Up to this moment, I have no idea why the latter is such a big issue with my Dad. Although these days, he has become more tolerant of such oversights, especially where the grandchildren are concerned.

My Mom, on the other hand, is a stickler for tidiness and house chores, and it didn't help that she was brought up believing that girls should know A to zed about them. As for the boys, well... they're boys, they can be left to their own devices and the most they can probably learn is to put up the toilet seat. With her and my Dad, it doesn't really go to the extreme of the master-servant scenario, but I bet my Dad will lose his way around the house without my Mom. Food will always be served to him, clothes will be laid out for him, other things besides he'd have to call out for either my mom, the children, or the maid... whoever is available. Not that my Dad is ever the lazy bum, I've never known him to be idle and he does odd jobs around the house too, on some very rare occassions. Well, in fairness, he spends a lot of time in the garden. It's just the way the cookie crumbles and as kids, it's how we've always known it to be.

When I got married, especially when we started living in our own house, I guess it was a given that I would be running my household the way my Mom taught me.

So now I pay close attention to corners and to edges of the angle made by the wall and the floor whenever I sweep or mop it. It would be most disconcerting to receive guests in my house without knowing that I've given it a thorough clean sweep, or at least a cleaner sweep than I usually would. Sometimes this could be alarming or amusing, depending on your mental state. For instance, recently we hired a temp to clean the house and iron clothes for us for 4 hours a week and she would usually come Tuesday afternoons. On the morning of her first day, I gave the house a once around and, worried that she might find it a mess, I cleaned a bit before she came. When she arrived, I couldn't find anything for her to do so I had to send her home and asked her to come back the following week. I'm not sure, but I swear I saw her scratching her head as she walked out the door.

So now I still soak clothes before actually putting them into the washer, even though the washer has settings for 'pre-wash.' I air-dry underwear with the right side out. I can never leave clothes piled askew in the clean laundry hamper waiting for the time when I can actually iron them so I take time to fold them neatly and keep them in the closet and that's where they wait. And speaking of closets! They can't be anything less than immaculate. I remember when we were all still going to school. If we were ever late for the car cause we couldn't find something we needed from the closet, we prayed hard for Dear God's mercy that my Mom would never find it lying beneath piles of mess or we'd be in deep trouble.

So now I have 3 sets of towels in the kitchen... one for the dishes, one for wiping my hands dry and one for wiping the countertops clean. And heaven forbid that I ever find my maid wiping the dining table and the greasy, grimy stove with the same towel. I will always wash the glasses first, and then the silver, and then the china. I can appreciate the practicality of not washing dishes one at a time, but I can never leave them in the sink overnight. My pots and pans, no matter how long I've been using them, will be gleaming inside and out, and even on the undersides. Everything stashed in the ref should be covered or packed in plastic, and the sides of the sink should always be kept dry after each use.

I keep every single bill in a file from day one, all sorted out and chronologically arranged with the latest bill on top. I can never go to the supermarket without a purchase list, I make a weekly inventory so I never have to run out of stock for whatever and I try to avoid having to go more than once a week cause I've been taught that it's more economical that way, never mind that I feel like lugging a ton each time I make that trip.

I prepare two cups of coffee every morning (never underestimate the convenience of a husband who doesn't take breakfast), lay fafa Jay's things down on the bed from underwear to wallet, and see him to the door before I can do my own thing. I pack his bags whenever he goes on a trip and I can not, for the life of me, conceive of him doing this on his own, even as he tells me he's quite capable of doing it himself. Back home, when I was still working in a hospital, I've been known to swap schedules with my co-nurses only on such occassions and only for such reasons and I'd have my fair amount of jousting from them.

In the afternoons or evenings before fafa Jay comes home, I'd take pains to have dinner ready and everything tidied up before he walks into the door. And when he does, I'd have a cold drink ready for him and a change of clothes would be lying in wait on the bed.

It's all well and good, I guess. My Mom has taught me suitably, I guess. The house is generally in order most of the time and fafa Jay's needs are taken care of, except... I know that there are times that it has made him uncomfortable. And I do understand where he's coming from, really, but try as I might, I can't be any different from what I already am.

Or so I thought.

Sometimes, things are taken out of our hands and most of the time, it makes us feel rutted, out of control, bumpy. And this is exactly what happened since I started doing KR.

See, I'm doing KR within a time-frame and no matter how much I try to keep the homefront as upkept as I want to, it's just not possible to squeeze it all in with all the time I've got. I've had to give up doing some things, or at least doing them as often as I did. And KR is also precisely the reason why we had to resort to hiring a temp.

I still do a lot of things around the house myself and I hope I still am being the dutiful wife, but no matter what effort I give it, there are times when I'd feel I'm getting slack with the chores, that the way I'm taking care of fafa Jay now is becoming slipshod by the day, that I'm going against everything that has been taught me as the proper way of doing things, as how things are supposed to be. All that this has done is to give me a considerable amount of stress and this is so not good for fafa Jay and me. Sometimes, our tempers would get on a head-on collision but it's more like mine would be scuttling onwards with full speed ahead and fafa Jay's would be staying put, bracing for the impact. A lot of times these encounters have made me sorry. All the time it has made me sad.

So now I'm trying to cut myself some slack, and on the rebound, hopefully fafa Jay too. These days, as long as I can, I try to convince myself that the floors are still clean. And anyway, even if fafa Jay really appreciates clean, he doesn't really mind messy. I'm not exactly appreciative of how the temp cleans the house but I do appreciate the time it affords me to do KR instead. I know for certain though that I appreciate not having to iron clothes anymore cause the temp's really good at that.

And fafa Jay...

Now I can look forward to weekends when I don't have to prepare the meals cause he's turned out to be quite adept in the kitchen, not to mention daringly innovative.

And because I can see how well he makes full use of his weekends, whenever a choice comes up between sprucing up the house and spending a lazy afternoon watching movies or taking a nap or losing myself in a good book, more and more I find myself contemplating the latter.

Maybe I will learn from KR what it is purported to teach me, maybe not. But one thing I've learned from it thus far, is that I can take it easy... that I do not have to run all the time because gliding will take me there just as well, while making it twice as fun.

If only we had children, I could teach them the best of both worlds.