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I once asked my mother how she’s stayed married to my father for more than 50 years, and she replied, “We have our zones.”
One could argue that their respective zones are retrograde and sexist, but it works for them. My father had the lawn, the garage and his workshop. My mother had the rest of the house. My father never expressed an opinion about throw pillows or whatever whimsical art she hung on the walls, and my mother didn’t judge his gadgetry. (A former electrical engineer, my father has owned an airplane, laser cutters, ham radio antennae, drill presses, vintage carburetors and an oscilloscope, among other items. My mother asked only that these not be publicly displayed.)
But now that they’ve downsized and moved into senior living, the zones have merged. Where roles were once understood, they’ve had to be renegotiated.
I’m referring to my father’s invasion of the kitchen. My mother’s zone. She has not borne it lightly.
Sidelined by knee replacement surgery last year, my mother could only watch helplessly as my father unilaterally purchased an enormous mixer. He considered baking a metric ton of cookies “helping” with her recovery. She could only see an ugly appliance taking up precious counter space.
“He’s taken over!” howled my mother on the phone. “You like cookies?” I offered.
A retired dietitian, my mother has a complicated relationship with cookies. Yes, she loves them, but there are standards, in quality and quantity. My father was failing at both metrics.
“His snickerdoodles are too hard. I said, ‘Stan, give these away.’ ”
My father gave the cookies to the front desk staff at their senior center. Which further enraged my mother, because they encouraged his baking, which emboldened him to seize more kitchen territory. He replaced her pots.
In fairness to my father, they were awful pots that probably could be carbon-dated to their wedding in 1965. Nonetheless, they were my mother’s. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with them, and he was overstepping.
“I can’t lift these things! He bought cast iron!” she wailed.
“Does it matter if he’s doing all the cooking now? Who cares what pots he uses?” I said.
That was the wrong answer. My mother clearly still considers herself administrator of the kitchen zone. Just because she’s ceded most of the cooking to him since her surgery didn’t give him license to usurp her zone. He should’ve consulted her.
A history of negotiated territories
It might seem rigid, but the defined territories of their relationship have held for 57 years for a reason.
In a fit of youthful experimentation in the ’70s, my mother allowed my father to cook for a time. He’d had an infatuation with the TV show The Galloping Gourmet, and a hippie bread-baking phase. She rolled with it. Until he took over a dinner party in 1976 and served hasenpfeffer (rabbit stew). For a week leading up to the party, there was a sever-headed, pickled rabbit in our refrigerator. As you can imagine, the sinewy, vinegar-soaked rabbit meat was not a hit. My mother was mortified. My father had been banished from the kitchen ever since.
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