My Place

I’m tired……….
Feel like I have spent majority of my life trying to please anyone and everyone.  Is this because I am female and I’ve been brought up by a mother who knew her place in the home. 
I remember as a very young child that dad never came home straight after work.  We would wait for him to arrive home from the club before we could eat dinner.  We always had to have something to eat that he liked, mashed potatoe, fried sausages or the like and vegetables.  If he didn’t like it he would look at mum and raise his eyebrows “What’s this”.  As we got older mum would let us eat rather than wait for him.  Even Christmas Day he would have to go down the “Workies” for a couple and would always be home late for lunch.
Mum was not allowed to have her own money, in our town married women were not allowed to work, so mum sewed dresses and iced cakes for a bit of extra cash.  She didn’t even have her own bank account until she was old enough to get the pension at 65.
My future was never discussed with me, obviously university and a career was out because I was female and would get married, have kids and stay home. As I got older things were different for me than mum, I had a career, worked through two pregnancies but still managed a household and the finances.
Times change and as you get older you learn; I changed with the times, it took nearly fifty years, two children and two marriages later but I look back and wonder about generations and the way things were.
I have stopped trying to please everyone and make sure their lives are easier, because you can’t continue to do this and keep sane.
Christmas lunch is at my house this year, and with joined families we usually have his kids, my kids the grandparents, the ex-inlaws,ex- brother-in-laws, boyfriends, fiancées and sometimes just friends who need somewhere to go. I don’t wait for anyone and I cook what I like to eat.  If dad doesn’t like it he can go hungry, if he is late too bad.
I know my place in my home.