I bent a little, leaning forward towards the kitchen sink. As I did this, I placed my left arm on the sink while my left palm was in the bowl containing the black-eyed peas that I was washing, to separate the peas from their skin. I added more water to the bowl containing the peas as my hands methodically rubbed the beans against each other, in handfuls.
I realised that I had a smile of victory on my face, the skin was coming off. This was good news even though it worried me a little that it was taking me a longer time to do this time around than it would usually take me. Was I losing touch or are my hands losing the youthful spring they once had? I screamed a big “no” in my head to the second question and concluded that I was just losing touch from lack of practice. I need to do this more often I concluded as I gently continued with the task at hand.
My thoughts spinning around and even went on zig zag trails as I continued to create friction, forcing the skin of the legume to come off. I thought about how I learnt this skill and how many times I had done this, in my former world.
As the memories flooded back, I noticed that my older daughter had come and stood beside me. She was watching me, and she was indeed fascinated at what I was doing. She asked me what I was doing, and I explained to her that I needed to get the skin off the legume, to make the “akara” (bean cake).
She was a bit intrigued, and I caught the look on her face that said, “I am not doing that” and so immediately, I told her that she needed to learn how to do this because she would be doing it soon.
After I had fried the bean cakes and they were enjoying it, I suddenly felt a brief wave of sadness creep through me. I paused and wondered, why did I feel this way? I didn’t need to think too much about it.
I felt that way because in this life that I live now, I had not created the time and opportunity to teach my daughters how to de-skin black eyed peas. I might not sound like “a thing” to many people but it was not just about the black-eyed peas, it was about the many other things that I had learnt to do at her age, that I had not started passing on to them.
Many of us might not have realised it but as females, our preparation for motherhood started earlier than we thought. Our mothers taught us many things that we know and that have come in handy when we became home builders. There was an informal education going on at the time. It could also be termed a teacher-leaner relationship. However, one unique thing about this relationship is that one of the parties is ignorant that there is a grooming going on. Most times we felt that we were just helping our mothers out with house chores and that doing those things were of no direct benefit to us at the time. Our mothers, however, were intentional with their teachings and instructions because they knew they were grooming home makers.
The big question is, “Are you preparing your girl-child to be a home builder? Are you equipping her with the skills that she needs to be a friend of God, functional wife, mother and a blessing to the world.
Do you have a plan for this? What is your strategy for this?
We will talk more on strategy in the next post.
#intentionalmomswin
#godlumum