Sweatshops at Six

My mother had always said, in that very special, spine-tingling tone of hers, that dinner was a time for family. She expected us to put our youthful wars, and later our teenage romances, on the backburner. There was no place for hyperactivity, or selfishness, or tardiness at my mother’s table; if eight of us weren’t there at six sharp, all hell would break loose. I say hell, but I imagine hell is a walk in a park compared to my mother’s acidic explosions. Boy, she could erupt; for many years, the local kids called her volcano lady behind her back. When she heard her own children saying it she’d beat us raw, but I’m pretty sure she secretly wore that moniker as a badge of pride.



That was the kind of lady my mother was. Strong willed. Fiery. Full of piss and vinegar. She ruled her roost with an iron fist. Even the cockroaches were under her thumb; as if by magic, they’d scuttle behind saucepans or into cracks as soon as she walked into a room.



For the longest time, I tried to avoid being like my mother. In the early days of our marriage, I encouraged my husband to take those long business trips without wailing and screaming and pulling great wads of my hair out. I let him completely control the household finances. I even expected him to do chores around the household, which my mother would have regarded as an almost complete deliration of my wifely duties.



And, when my precious daughter was born, I didn’t want to rule her with an iron fist. I thought love, and care, and attention was all that was needed to raise a well-behaved child; a child that wouldn’t rip the stuffing out of favourite toys at kindergarten, or throw all her vegetables straight on to the floor.



How very, terribly naïve of me.



So now the year is 2012, and what do I see? I see a self-absorbed man where my beloved used to be, and an angelic-looking child capable of doing things I daren’t think about.



And I realized that – as usual - the volcano lady was right.



The first thing I instituted was the six o’clock dinner. I imagined I was an impassionate oak tree, and let my husband’s excuses rain down on me because I knew that they’d eventually wash away. No, my husband wasn’t the problem, but rather my daughter, who had inherited her grandmother’s iron will.



Every night, my daughter believed with all her heart that her delightfully messy paintings, or picture books, or glittery blonde dolls simply would not wait until after dinner. And so every night, we would draw the battle lines and engage.



“I hate you! (BLAM),” she’d scream. “You’re the worst person ever! (BOOM). I wish you weren’t my mother at all! (BLAM BLAM BOOM)”.



For now, I have the bigger arsenal but even though I’ve won every battle, the echo from those gunshots hung over us as we ate. Until, that is, I started turning the television on.



I know my mother would have never, ever allowed the alien worlds from the six o’clock news to invade her dinner table, but I find the white noise cathartic, and the news has proven to be an unexpected god-send for my daughter’s desperately needed moral education.



Just the other day, she was utterly entranced by an international story about sweatshop workers; perhaps it was the way the people moved in tandem like they were doing some kind of awful jerky dance, or perhaps it was just the utter defeat in their eyes, the poor souls.



“Mother,” she said, only slightly turning her earnest little face towards me. “What’s wrong with those people?”



“Well darling, those people are very unlucky. They don’t have a nice job in an office like your father does. They have to go and work very, very hard in a place called a sweatshop, making things for people in other countries for very little money, and that has made them very tired and sad.”



“Why is it so hard? It doesn’t look hard.” She picked up her glass, swung to the side like a robot, and put it down on the table. Then she repeated the action, again and again, and I have to admit it she saw so cute that it was awfully hard not to join in with the giggling.



“That might be easy once or twice, but could you imagine doing that all day? From the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep?”



“No way!”



“Yes way.”



She fell silent, but I could see she was eyeing up that glass with a much more serious expression. She picked it up once more, and then put it down very gently. “Will I have to work in a sweatshop?”



I’m sure the volcano lady would’ve gleefully assured her that was exactly her fate if she didn’t eat her vegetables or do her homework.



“No, darling,” I said.



“Well, why do they have to work in a sweatshop? Why are they unlucky?”



“In their country, many people borrowed too much money to buy lots of things they didn’t really need. And then they borrowed money to buy houses that were too big for them. And then the banks couldn’t lend out any more money, even though the people in charge of the banks were very, very rich. Many shops and business had to shut down, because people couldn’t afford to buy things any more. So the people lost all their expensive things and big houses, and then they lost their good jobs.”



“And had to work in sweatshops?”



“Exactly, my darling.”



That night, my daughter ate all her vegetables up, without any nagging at all which just goes to show that nothing is certain in this life, except for dinner at six o’clock.