Last week Friday I learned a valuable lesson. It is very easy to throw around lines like “we must accept people for who they are” and “we must not box people”. A months or so ago I bought a wooden TV stand, it was a bargain, since it was real wood, but the trick was that it was not stained. Knowing myself it was not going to be an issue, I am hands on kind of person, and I guess being raised by my strict grandparents has paid off. I grew up in Limpopo and we had to share households chores together with my aunts and brother from sweeping a yard that was full of mango and litchi trees after a night of heavy summer rain, to cleaning the house, you could not go to sleep with a kitchen sink full of dishes, my grandmother would wake you up in the middle of the night and make you wash them without making noise and during planting season or school holidays you would spend it in their farm planting different vegetables, mowing the lawn or watering the garden.
My husband is quite the opposite. He is laid back and he is not hands at all, his idea of a Saturday is a book or giving orders to a handyman. He will mow the lawn or paint if you ask him. He will clean the garage or do any handy work if you nag him. Over the years this has always been one of our biggest challenge. Mostly our conversation would go something like this “can you clean out the garage can you not see that it is dirty” or I want you to pain that rocking chair and his response would go something along this line “but why can’t you hire someone or buy a painted chair?” or just find someone to do it I will pay the bill. I would get angry and start shouting and telling him that he is supposed to be handy he is a man. All men are supposed to be good with their hands. Putting him in that mental box that society creates for people, that makes relationships complicated. Women are supposed to be good at this while men are supposed to be good at that. The same mental box that sees us teaching our girls to “take care of everyone” by teaching them household chores while the boys are busy playing in the street. The mental box that says that a good woman is quite and soft spoken and when you are outspoken you are not “marriage material”. Funny part is I do not like being put in that box; I do not like behaving like I am expected by society, I have made my own rules, my rules are very simple I live my life to the fullest and life is a big adventure for me. I could not be bothered what society and their box prescribes, as long as it does not work for me I am not interested and I am not going in that box even at the risk of being isolated from society.
Now going back to that TV stand, they deliver it home and I ask my husband, who has over the years expressed his lack of interest in handy work to vanish the stand for me. He goes and paints it the best way he knows how and I had to bite my tongue and just accept that he did his best and out of love and respect for me. Today I decided that it has been a month or so since he painted and I am going to apply another coat of vanish. I have the patience for handy work, and as I apply layers and layers of paint and I can see it becoming what I had envisioned when I bought it. I started asking myself what was so hard for this man of mine, why could he not do it this was. I just had a voice in my head saying but he was honest with you, he does not enjoy this, but you were suffering from your “mental box syndrome”, were too busy trying to make him fit into the box. It got me thinking if we accepted people for who they are in relationships, be it our friends, partners or kids, we fight not squeeze them in mental boxes, what would happen? If a person tells you I am not good at this in a relationship and you complement them instead of forcing them in a mental box, what would happen? Am I glad I am a work in progress, because it means I am open to learning and becoming a better me!
