How to Boil Potatoes.
A grown woman asks her friends how to boil new potatoes – and behind the laugh sits a rule she was raised on and has stopped obeying.
Bella asks her friends how to boil new potatoes and laughs at herself before anyone else can. She hates cooking – the recipes, the shopping, the stove, the cleaning up afterwards – and most of the post is a list of what she can't be bothered with, told without a gram of apology. It's funny. And then, near the end, it turns.
Her mother was raised on a sentence in capital letters: A WOMAN MUST BE A GOOD WIFE AND HOUSEWIFE. The Blind Spot describes how early we learn which parts of ourselves earn love and which don't – and how the rest of life goes into climbing that list. Bella's answer is neither to become the good housewife nor to fight her. She takes the part of her that hates the kitchen and gives it a plain right to exist: she likes doing laundry, she likes scrubbing the bath, cooking is not hers, and she isn't embarrassed to say so.
That is the whole spiritual content of a potato post, and it is enough. Be yourself, and if something isn't yours – don't do it.
How do you boil potatoes?
When we were teenagers, a story went around in my friend's circle about a girl they knew who decided to make fried eggs for the first time in her life and, so it went, just put the eggs in the pan without cracking them and waited for them to turn into fried eggs on their own. We laughed about it for ages and kept bringing that story up.
But today I pulled off roughly the same thing, and I looked at that situation completely differently. Let's start with the fact that I hate cooking. I don't like looking up recipes, buying groceries, standing at the stove and then cleaning all of it up afterwards. I can make a little sandwich, a little salad, boil pasta – the very basics, so to speak. And what doesn't interest me, I don't really remember. For instance, I rarely cook buckwheat, and every time I google when to put it in: cold water or boiling. And so today I decided to boil new potatoes for the first time and asked my friends how to cook them. I'm 100% sure they had a laugh, and honestly I cracked up at myself too. But I don't like cooking, it's not my thing – though the mood does come sometimes, and then I can boil potatoes and throw fish fingers in the oven.
And even more than cooking, I hate cleaning the kitchen. Those leftover bits of food in the sink, the dishcloth that, even when it's new, always stinks, so that afterwards your hands stink too and you have to wash them twice and put cream on. I can't help it, but the whole kitchen thing – it's just not me. And thank God I have my husband, who cleans the kitchen every single time. And has never once held it against me.
But, by the way, back when I wanted to get married by any means, I went on to everyone about how I cook and clean. Thank God I didn't get married back then – it would have been the disappointment of the century.
And how is this post connected to spirituality? Easily. My mum was raised on the idea that A WOMAN MUST BE A GOOD WIFE AND HOUSEWIFE. She's one of those who washes, cooks, does the laundry, works and sleeps all at the same time – and if guests are coming, as you've already guessed, she'll scrub the whole house on top of that, or else they'll say: "Bad housewife." Me, I've accepted that this is how I am: I love doing laundry, cleaning the bath, but cooking is not my thing, and I'm not embarrassed to admit it. Be yourself, and if something isn't yours – don't do it. Refuse, and enjoy it.
Thank you for reading.
If her words reached somewhere mine don't – good. That's what this blog is for. Take what fits and leave the rest.
– Jan