gender equality

I feel very proud today because our family duo has finally managed to achieve perfect gender equality. Hanko Bratt loaded and unloaded three dishwashers, I did three laundry rounds, we ate the same amount of chocolate, sat in front of the computer for equal number of hours and shouted at the children with sentences having the same word count.

Having kids 14+ and 16+ is delightful. A gift that keeps on giving. Joy, affection, rotten food under the bed, love, stinking socks, there’s no end to the list of blessings. Sometimes Hanko and I would take an old album and flip through photos from 7-8-11 years ago. He sighs with sadness, I wring hands, then we hug and sob in silence. Once recovered, Hanko goes outside and fires the grill with a manly gaze wandering above the trees, and I take out the pans. Because it’s eating all day long in our house. Cookies are baked, meals are composed and salads are chopped with the mere hope of these bottomless throats and gigantic elastic stomachs to be finally satiated.

When I was little my father called me “Spaska the Lamia” in his alcohol delirium; a nickname rooted in my love for food perhaps or was it rather food instead of love, I cannot remember exactly. Point is, both from personal experience and from the Greek mythology I know that the “lamia” condition is only temporary and it proved better for us to humbly install a pipeline between the kitchen and the kids’ rooms instead of opposing Mother nature. We decided to roll up sleeves and do our job properly till the very end. We’ll steam broccolini and bake cantuccini a few years more, after which we’ll gently push the hell-raisers out of the nest. May The Force be with us until then.

We‘ve heard the best is yet to come so we temper ourselves in order to be fully prepared. We train, we take vitamins, we sleep on hemp linen – various optimisations have been implemented so to help us survive in the eye of the storm. It’s only masks that we still don’t have, for they are sold out everywhere because of the coronavirus, and a gas mask might be too heavy…

Anyhow, we’ll think of some protection against the morning pulverizations (the son is superstitious and believes that if he doesn’t spray the damned deodorant at least 576 times yet another pimple will shine on his nose) as well as the dirty socks sprouting from the carpet every day at dusk. I am off to serve my obligations now and later I will check the net for some advice on amulets against condescending looks, sighs and slamming doors.