The Weekend such as it was....

Akin to blindness, there is an element of obliviousness which must fall into most lives. Genderly speaking, it is this obliviousness between husbands and wives and how they view their children that determines power structures in a family. I have not mentioned before my children are daughters; they steam roll their father and they are really good cooks...for the most part. To be fair, I don't usually leave the kitchen when one of my daughters is attempting to make supper or bake or knead bread. Admittedly, I might be at the table reading a book but I am there, there in an omnipresent way and available to help when needed. My beloved husband? Not so much.

This past weekend was a doozy because I was not there, my husband was and so, too, the matriarch for good measure. It is terrible to admit my daughter set the oven on fire again; same child, same Yorkshire puddings, same reason--no cookie tray beneath a pan overfilled with oil. What does a man do when faced with this dilemma? First, he was on the computer in the basement and when my daughter yelled down to him, she needed some help, he took his time coming up the stairs. The child is pretty smart--previous experience, you know--so she turned the oven off but then, like me, she opened the door to the oven....I think you can imagine the rest. My husband freaked. I believe I should highlight he is not usually the panicking kind. He shut the door to the oven, yelled to the girls to get out of the house, and went upstairs to get his mother. He, fortunately, remembered the cat. (Please note, fire is still burning in the oven--door closed).

I have the van because I am spending a couple of hours undisturbed at a bookstore. Alone. He has the Honda CRV--which the matriarch cannot get into. So, he lifts his mother into the car, turns it on for heat, puts the 12 year old with the cat in the front, the others in the back and then returns to the house. I come home with the expectation of a nice roast beef dinner to be ready and wonder why the family is sitting in a running car in the driveway. Apparently, my neighbour is wondering the same thing--more about that later. I go into a smoke infested house to see my husband putting rock salt--y'know the kind for driveways--on a fire in the oven. Aside: this is never, ever a good idea. What is on the rock salt begins to pop in my oven and there is a pungent odour emanating from the stove.

What are you doing? I ask my husband with smoky eyes, coughing and with a "why aren't the windows open" sort of addendum. He has shut the windows to prevent oxygen from feeding the fire and when I say the house is filled with smoke, I am talking about both floors and all the rooms, he looks at me as though this makes perfect sense.

My husband tells me his mother said rock salt would be as good as table salt.

Why wouldn't you use table salt? (Fire still going on in the oven--fed by whatever is on the rock salt; I have stopped my husband from putting anymore on to the flames.)

Couldn't find it.

This is a very specific gender difference between men and women; there is always salt in this house, much like sugar. One might have to move a jar of peanut butter to see it, but it is always there. We empty two boxes of table salt onto the flames and get the fire out. We also open every window in the house and shut off the furnace. We stand out on the porch airing our eyes and breathing fresh air. After last time, my husband purchased a fire extinguisher; but, then, he stored it in the garage--which, if you are in Ontario, at this moment, is not a good idea. It froze and, thus, was completely useless.

At this point, the daughter who inadvertently started the fire gets out of the car and wants to know if she can go to her room.

The house is too smoky, I say, and she bursts into tears because her sisters have accused her of trying to burn down the house.

That's not true, I say. Let me go talk to them.

My youngest then hops out of the car with the cat and reveals the cat is trying to eat grandma's coat. I cannot make this stuff up. And, Grandma wants to go up to her room and asks when is dinner going to be ready?

No Yorkshire pudding for dinner, but the roast is already out of the oven and the vegetables are cold but edible. And, we can save the muffin tins used for the Yorkshire puddings because my husband pulled them out of the oven when he opened the door to put the rock salt in. I make a gravy to heat everything up when we eat.

It is Saturday and we obviously miss Earth Hour but to be fair, technically, there was nothing on in the house.

The next day, leaving the kitchen mess still there and my husband off on an appointment to do with work and not play, I encountered my neighbour at a Math Tournament for the girls. He is a Russian Mathematician and has gotten the children involved with all kinds of Math contests. We say hi and he comments on how big the children have gotten and how they grow up so fast; it is a strange sort of small talk considering we live across the street from one another. Then there is a silence.

I didn't know your youngest could drive...

She can't.

I didn't think so when I saw the cat but your husband was acting so weird yesterday. Did he tell he lifted his mother into the car? I think she could have gotten in on her own. But they went nowhere. He just kicked everyone out of the house, I watched him check all the windows and they sat in the car till you came home. Is everything okay?

What do you say when your humiliation has become public? But, note, this is another gender difference. No woman of calibre would ever ask publicly about the machinations of family life; she might be discreet, she may even gossip, but she would never ask in a public forum within the hearing of other people, other mothers and fathers about a strange family situation. I didn't tell the neighbour about our Saturday adventures. I didn't want to and I dread cleaning the kitchen this evening. The mess is not pleasant and I am hoping my husband's obliviousness can last until I paint the kitchen ceiling. Or rather, my obliviousness should last until he paints it.