sunday scribblings ~ instructions

clothes hanging across downtown Angels Camp, canon digital rebel xt

I never really considered myself the domestic type. I didn't really have anyone to practice on. I was on my own well into my early thirties until I got married at 32. Even when I lived with a boyfriend in my late twenties for a good year, we both worked in the city until late at night, so didn't have time to even think about whipping up a gourmet meal for two. We lived on salads with chicken on top, nearly every night and it suited us fine. We both did our own laundry and cleaned our own rooms.

I didn't have the culinary gene that my sisters were blessed with. They were both married by 20 and mothers shortly thereafter, so they didn't really have a choice but to learn quickly. It was so natural for them, so I expected to have that gene as well...but every time I tried, it ended up in the garbage burnt to a crisp or tasting dreadful.

I hated cleaning and doing laundry, was frightened of the kitchen and was a seriously liberated woman. How on earth would I make a man happy in a marriage? He would have to be equally as liberal and have no expectations of me being what society viewed as the "perfect wife". My head was everywhere else but on duties of the home.

It turns out that I was blessed with a man that had been on his own for so long that he knew how to take care of himself. He loved to cook and he constantly said he had no expectations of me. So, we both went our separate ways during the day at work and sometimes at school and I would come home to him whipping up a bit of dinner for two.

Since I quit the corporate world and am now working on my creative business at home, something has been stirring within. I am nesting. I have found myself taking serious pride in my home and how we express ourselves inside of it. I have had urges to learn how to cook and am actually enjoying the creative process in the kitchen. I have figured out the timing in putting a load of laundry in while getting work done until it is finished. When I try a new recipe, I intently watch my husbands expression as he takes his first bite. What is happening to me?!?!?!? Why am I not out on the town having martinis with my girlfriends? Oh, that's right...I am married and I am totally being a domestic goddess and oh my God...enjoying it.

I'll even find myself singing and dancing in the kitchen and saying out loud..."I am so gourmet!".

Oy.

The most beautiful thing through this process is that my husband still does not expect it from me. Because, the minute he did, I would fight it tooth and nail! Funny how that works.

I am doing these things because I want to, not because I have to...and not because I am following an "instruction manual" on how to be a wife.

I am so glad that there isn't one and that I can just go with the flow...and just be me. I am so grateful that I have a husband that also goes with the flow and appreciates all that I do with sweet surprise and never once takes it for granted.

So, perhaps I do have that gene that makes you want to fiercely protect the man you love and the children that come after. Perhaps it is something primal and surfaces when all feels aligned in a relationship.

I am still trying, as a liberal woman, to figure how to balance it all without the assistance of an instruction booklet, "How to be a wife, a mother and a liberated woman".

I do know I am having fun learning and my husband has a huge smile on his face watching.

For more Sunday Scribblings on "instructions"...go here.

edited to add: an update on my father's surgery is in a comment by me in my previous post.