I was raised by a women’s libber. That meant that I was not taught how to clean a house, nor how to cook a meal. Whenever a commercial came on the family TV showing a woman pampering the house or posing in the kitchen with a smile on her face, my mom would let out an exasperated noise and quickly turn sour. This happened about every fifteen minutes because most commercials at the time showed happy women keeping house. Heaven forbid the lady had an apron on; my mom would abruptly launch from the couch and say she couldn’t take it anymore.
When a new typing class was offered at school, my mom said that I should not take it under any circumstances. If a future employer knew I could type, I might not get any further than a secretarial position. When I told Mom I wanted to be an artist, she would respond, “You mean an architect? That would be great!”
What did I become? At first a successful art director, then a successful business owner. Now that that’s done, I’m becoming more of an artist. But that’s another story. Here I want to express what happens when a girl grows up with the clear communication from her dear mom that cooking and cleaning is a waste of time and should never be expected from a competent woman.
First there was the problem of what to do with the toilet. I avoided cleaning one all through my years at college, but as a single young lady living in Manhattan, I looked at it and wondered what to do. So I called Mom. Don’t ask me why. I could have called anyone else and would have been given something more helpful, but, you see, as much as Mom knew she was better than all that, she was, in truth, the one who did all the cleaning in our home.
“Mom, how do you clean a toilet?” I asked. Her reply, “It’s not rocket science, you know.” And that was that.
Still at a loss, I went to the bookstore and bought an excellent book on speed cleaning by the San Francisco Clean Team. It taught me how to clean a toilet from top to bottom in seven minutes. The top-to-bottom part is meant to be taken literally: it is very important to start at the top where the toilet is cleanest and work down to the bottom where the germs are festering so you don’t end up dragging the dreadful stuff up to the top and making more of a mess than you had at the beginning.
The Clean Team book was all I needed, but I have to say that I don’t adhere to all their rules: they stress the importance of wearing an apron while you clean; an apron with big pockets so you can stash cleaning supplies in one and put loose trash and knickknacks you pick up along the way in another. Out of respect for my mom, I just can’t flurry around the house in an apron.
Then came the cooking. When I first moved to New York City, my mother did some research and called me with glee in her voice: “Did you know that there are so many restaurants in Manhattan that you can eat out every meal for sixty years and never go to the same restaurant twice?” I thought this was great news too and kept few staples in my pantry because of it.
Once I moved to the suburbs, settled down, and became a mom myself, things took a drastic turn. I have poignant memories of putting my little Luke in his highchair, looking him in the face, and asking, “Now what do I feed you?” Food preparation just wasn’t my calling; it seemed so unimportant in the scheme of all the exciting, creative, and meaningful things to do in life.
