Chapter 285

Sitting here staring at a blank screen will not get this moving. You have to put words on the page. You have to give shape to the story. Like the stories my dad is telling as I try to write this, all of those stories have one ending, based on my dad’s assumptions about both the husbands and the wives in those stories. My dad assumes that the wives who made sandwiches and fetched iced tea for their husbands were weak and foolish, and that strong women will tell their husbands to get up and make or fetch their own! But this is not the only possibility here in these stories. The women my dad is making these assumptions about, could be like my own wife, who actually finds it so delightful if I will actually ask for a sandwich or glass of something to drink, so that she can get it for me! Took me way too long to figure out that for my wife, this was way fun and something she has a blast doing for me. That does not make her weak nor foolish, it makes her at the very least, generous and thoughtful, among other things.

My dad’s stories assume that the men in his story are helpless at taking care of themselves. That they can’t cook or make a sandwich or pour themselves a glass of tea. Of course anyone who cooks, knows that anyone can cook. Men or women can do all domestic tasks period. They are not gender specific, no matter what they believe in the Slavic world.

And lets be honest here, I have made assumptions about my dad’s assumptions. They could have been, and maybe are, otherwise.

But don’t lock yourself into one story ending or meaning. There are lots of possibilities.