Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
I don’t cook. My version of MasterChef involves the following tried and tested steps: remove packaging, pierce film, microwave, let stand and eat. If I’m asked to bring dessert, I’m thinking ‘pack of Tim Tams’ possibly opened and partly consumed.
People think I’m joking when I proudly proclaim my non-cooking prowess but I am only mildly exaggerating. In the last twelve months I have cooked on three occasions – and that’s me happily done for the year. In this era of eating clean, nation-wide bake-offs, high drama kitchen competitions devoted to finding home cooks worthy of Michelin stars, I sense the looks of disgust when I describe my anti-oven status. I assure you it is not just a lifestyle choice born of laziness and circumstance, although as a one-person, professional household I feel wholeheartedly entitled to such a slothly option. My decision to be gloriously inept in all matters culinary is an act of rebellion against the damagingly sexist dinner table politics of my childhood (politics which persist for my mother and continue to haunt me).
I am the product of a stay-at-home mum and white collar dad. Without question: I love them, they love me. There were many advantages to having a home-based parent who capably managed our household affairs and another parent who was a well-earning, generous, fiscally gifted contributor to the family income. The privileges I enjoyed I count as blessings and I don’t believe there need be anything inherently wrong with this achingly traditional arrangement if it is born by choice and nurtured by mutual respect. Unfortunately, especially for my mum, this wasn’t the case for us.
Food and cooking seemed to throw an unforgiving spotlight onto the significant gender injustice that was implicitly and consistently communicated in our home. By looking at the way meals were planned, prepared, consumed and cleared it was clear that my father’s needs, time and efforts superseded (by far) my mother’s. By example, they showed me that “men’s” contribution and time was more valuable than a woman’s. There is a deep sadness when I think of the disservice done to Mum whose worth has been crushed into shrinking portions with the passing of the years. There are deep scars she carries and I have inherited some of this wounding.
In our household Mum would wake at 5.30am every weekday morning in order to prepare a fresh fruit salad (lunch) and vegemite crackers (snacks) for Dad to take to work. He would trot off with decades-old Tupperware and dutifully prepared sustenance ready to begin his workday before 7am. Without fail, he would call the house at the completion of his day, sometime after 5pm, to let Mum know he was on his way. As a child I believed this phone call to be a romantic gesture, a reconnecting after a day apart but, in reality, it was the cue for her to have dinner on the table for shortly after his arrival home.
When dinner was dished up there was a specific sequence to the serving which reflected the family pecking order; Dad first, the brothers in order of age, then me (the only girl), and lastly Mum would serve herself. On finishing, Dad would take only his plate and only his cutlery into the kitchen, the rest of the cleaning up was left to Mum and ‘the children’.
There is a pocket of my heart reserved for a long-held, simmering rage this food-based injustice helped to stoke throughout my childhood and teenage years. Interestingly, my parents sent me to a school where “Girls can do anything” was a much used call to inspire students (you could even buy it in sticker form) and although that message was a loud and clear part of my education and encouraged by my parents, the home experience provided a distinct sub-clause; “Girls can do anything…as long as it doesn’t disrupt their men or interfere with the services they provide at home like making the meals and cleaning up”.
Tattooed on my memory is an occasion when Mum was out at choir practice (she has a beautiful voice), a rare opportunity to do something she loved and take time for herself. She assumed Dad would fix himself something for lunch, maybe not soufflé but possibly a straightforward ham and tomato sandwich. Much to her chagrin she returned home to an unfed and barely watered husband who was aghast she hadn’t been available at the expected time to prepare his food.
On another occasion I asked why, even if she must prepare Dad’s food, the fruit salad and vegemite crackers couldn’t possibly be made the night before so she could enjoy some more well-earned sleep. Mum told me: “Your father doesn’t like the crackers soggy”. On hearing this I didn’t know who deserved more of my anger, a father whose demands were unreasonable and insulting or a mother who accepted them and earned a black belt in passive aggression in the process. In all honesty, they each own sizeable real estate in my little pocket of rage even if Dad’s is bigger and comes with a view.
In response to this exasperating unfairness I couldn’t resolve, I railed against learning to cook and decided to be vocal about the gender inequalities at home. I would pipe up and ask whether Dad thought the salt, pepper and other condiments magically made their own way back into the cupboard when he continued to clear his (and only his) eating implements. I pretended my eyes were laser beams of fury when the men in my family would casually sit about chatting or watching sport happily oblivious as I laboured in the kitchen with Mum. I was clear and vocal in asking my dad and brothers to participate in the kitchen duties to be mostly ignored and sometimes even scolded for a lack of ‘graciousness’ (because the problem is how I asked, not that I had to, right?). I provided statistics from my high school feminism modules about the ongoing gender imbalance in household chores and the estimated monetary value of women’s unpaid contribution to the economy (it’s huge by the way, think billions). Nothing penetrated; from cajoling, well-researched stats, snarkiness to pleading and screaming. Dad’s routine to this day, even as a mobile and fully functioning retiree, does not include food preparation or cooking of any kind (he doesn’t even make his own sandwiches or reheat meals). At a stretch he may help with drying dishes and this is considered significant progress.
I made a vow to myself that my future relationship arrangements would hold no resemblance to that of my parents’. I would like to tell you I kept that promise but it seems that the silent lessons from my childhood home grounded out the empowering mottos of my schooling. Thankfully, I have divorced the husband who, as soon as we married, would await me coiled at the front door ready to berate me for not being home to cook him dinner. The fact that my high-paying, managerial job meant I needed to be in the office much longer hours than his academic post (which paid around half of what I was earning) seemed to have escaped him, as had the notion that he could take on the cooking duties.
When I took a part-time role said husband sat me down, itemised our paid weekly working hours and announced the difference between his full-time hours and my part-time week would become the hours I worked for him. He has ‘Doctor’ before his name but I think ‘Dick’ would be more appropriate. Unfortunately, this unintended and much regretted reneging on the commitment I made to my teenage self to avoid men like him and relationships like that means that I too am a plot holder in my pocket of rage.
So, when I say I don’t cook, it is a statement of liberation and something of a two-finger salute to the frustrating gender imbalance of my childhood home. When I say I don’t cook, I am reminding myself and telling you no man, no one, no relationship will ever write over my heart again and again, day after day, until my heart is a haggard, shrivelled barely beating pulp, “you are not and your time is not as valuable as the people with whom you share space and life”.
Should you find yourself with an invitation to dinner at mine expect Dominos and Tim Tams (well, half the pack maybe) and wine, a lot of wine.