Bruger is the subdivision where we presently live. How it got its name I can only guess, but everytime the word is mentioned, BRUGER, I can't help but create a mental picture of a juicy burger filled with BLT to excess, and my mouth waters and a teeny bit of saliva is just threatening to come off. Anyway, that is not the subject of this post.
I have been nothing short of a domestic slave the past two weeks… until Thursday at least when the yaya comes back. She has gone away to the province to bury her dead brother. Husband and I have been left tending to the kids on weekends, and me, poor me---a washerwoman, child minder, cook, etc...hammered by crying baby and a little boy who so conveniently throws fits of temper on these bleak hours of domicile mayhem ...There's no one we can ask help from at the moment, and it would be too much to impose ourselves on relatives who have their own hands full with something.
So, can't I help feeling like that french woman banished into a life of slavery, scrubbing floors and hanging laundry, against her repressed sensibilities, while the greasy stinking husband pokes into her poor ass. Only this time it’s not the husband that pokes, but the little monsters that are my children. How much more could I endure, I don’t know. But, patience, patience, patience…is still a virtue.
On days like these, I am constrained to look back at the single life I had for many, many years. Back then, it was only me, myself and shaz (my other self) to care about. The world didn’t complain one bit if I didn’t tidy up my room for one year. No one would dare disagree if I thought it was more practical to sortie the food stalls outside than cook on my own. I could read all I want, I could go home whenever I pleased, I could move at a snail’s pace if I wanted to. It was a simple and uncomplicated life. Not unlike now, urgency is the word of the century, and so much more.
I wonder though, had I remained ensconced in my simple and trouble-free life, if I had been any happier. Strange that having too little to worry about makes me quite unsettled. Sometimes unknowingly, I embrace the convolutions of life….being human and living strenuously brings some sense of comfort—in that I am indeed alive and struggling to overcome Life, and trying to become bigger than it is.
So am I happy being a mother? Ouch, I hear my children shrieking and yelling again…back to the merciless motherly business.
