Suburban Malaise

On Not Watching the Superbowl

After I recovered from this morning’s migraine, I read a posting about the difficulties single women face in meeting decent, available men in New York. Since I was once one of those women, it feels incongruous to think that tomorrow I will be host (or is it hostess-ing?) a Superbowl get-together in our messy suburban domicile. A friend of mine and I have been getting together with our husbands and kids on Superbowl Sunday. Since we both have girls, we let the “guys” watch TV while we “gals” do our own socializing. Whose house would it be at this year? Neither of us felt like cleaning up the house for this, so I volunteered my house. My husband and I both grew up in big, baby-boom families that were too small for all the kids, so we both have a high tolerance for confusion and clutter. If we don’t feel like cleaning up, we just don’t. The TV is in the kitchen so the men can cook as they watch. I know it’s un-American to dislike the Superbowl and all the attendant hoopla, but there it is.

Thinking of the Dream Kitchen

After I mopped the winter slush off the floor of my circa 1980's kitchen, I relaxed by watching some some of the long-forgotten sales films and commercials available online through the invaluable Moving Image Archive. In the 1955 film pictured above, A Word to the Wives (sponsored by America's Homebuilders), housewife Jane Peters commiserates to her friend Mary Edwards about her "nightmare kitchen." Mary, in her gleaming new kitchen with steel cabinets and an automatic flour dispenser, suggests a way to "trick" her husband into buying her a new house: go visit her brother in Cleveland and leave hubby and son to fend for themselves. Disaster ensues when George tries to cook himself and his son dinner! He's so incompetent he can't even open the kitchen cabinets by himself. When the Peters go the Edwards' house for a dinner party, Mary prepares a delicious dinner of baked ham with grape jelly and mustard dressing and a sweet potato casserole with pineapple and marshmallows. George is sold! He buys Jane a new house. Now Jane has time to indulge in the only activities this film could imagine for women outside of housework and child-raising: shopping and playing golf. I feel mildly guilty watching these old films; I feel like I'm snooping in on my parents' generation and seeing their humble desires commoditized in a way that, crass as these films are, is oddly touching.

Back to the regular routine

My daughter hopefully went online this morning to see if today would be another snow day. No such luck. The sun is shining and the streets are clear. A friend and fellow mother called to comiserate with me about how mean middle school girls are to each other. Her daughter is this year's odd girl out and, as these things go, her mom feels like she is the odd mom out as well. They're in a different public school system than us, more prestigious academically, but also a lot more "snooty." All those high-powered parents and kids can really dole out a lot of high-powered rejection. And it's hard not to get over-invested in our kids and their happiness. Which is better, the way we grew up, where our parents were completely indifferent (at least mine were) to what happened in school, or the opposite, where we're hanging over them cross-examining them over their school day? I know kids are supposed to learn how to handle this sort of rejection and grow emotionally from it, but we all know from our own childhoods how painful it is. Instead of helping us grow emotionally, it can turn us into lost souls.

Later, I went to the supermarket and the couple in front of me didn't have enough to pay for all their groceries. They were paying in cash and I waited while they went through their bags and picked out the food they could live without; in this case, a giant tub of margarine and two big bags of crackers and chips. I sympathized with them, but no wonder America has an obesity problem! Then, I went to the health food store for some vitamin B-2, which I hoped would help my stubborn migraines. And again, the woman in front of me ran out of cash. She and the cashier pondered what to put back, the vitamins or the protein mix. People running out of money . . . could this be an omen of economic things to come? Or just another sign of declining math ability?