I heard a knock on the door. It was my wife. She had just returned from work. It was around 7:30pm. I opened the door for her, we exchanged pleasantries and I returned to the room where I had been working while she made her way to another room to undress.
Some moments later, she came to the room where I was and with a look that was a little unfriendly asked, “sebi you’re good for the night.” She had seen the unwashed pot of a particular Eba that I made and ate in the afternoon when I was hungry. She thought I just ate the food.
I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t good for the night at all. That I was actually hungry. That I had eaten the Eba far back in the afternoon.
She muttered some grumblings with a stern face and shut the door and walked away. The message was already clear to me. She was angry that she’ll still have to expend energy in the kitchen that night. She was also partly angry that I had been in the house and couldn’t even cook. I had to wait for her to arrive to come and do the cooking. Little did she know that though I was working from home, I was occupied all through the day.
Since the hunger was biting me, and from the look of things, my wife wasn’t ready to do any cooking that night, I immediately left what I was doing and made for the kitchen. I found a left over soup that can go side by side with Amala. But there was no meat or fish in it at all. There’s this woman that sells fried fish and meat in the night in our area. I made for the woman’s shop to buy fried meat. I resisted every temptation to buy mine alone. That’s usually the temptation whenever events like this occur.
When I retuned, I asked her if she’ll prefer to eat Amala or Eba because I was about to make it. She told me she wasn’t interested in eating any food. I knew it was a trap. If I make my own food only, I would have lost the opportunity to tame a brewing crisis. I therefore simply made the decision of what to make singlehandedly and thus made Amala for two people. I had also gotten meat for two. I served the food – mine and hers; took hers to her in the living room first and then went for mine. We sat down in front of each other to eat that night; conversing calmly gradually.
We went to bed that night in peace. The crisis that our home would have been engulfed in that night was quelled with wisdom and the life of Christ!
It will interest you that one of the major areas of quarrel in matrimony is in the area of food and other domestic duties. Culturally, the woman of the house mans these duties. But sometimes, that woman is fatigued, especially in a generation where the woman is as much a bread winner as the man. Sometimes she just loses interest in doing any cooking.
That day when she losses interest may be the day you’re returning home as a husband very hungry, expecting that food would have been ready, only for you to return and meet your wife sleeping. You quickly rush to the kitchen thinking probably the food was fixed before she started sleeping only to find all the pots empty and clean. How are you supposed to respond at such a time without the house going up in flames?
In the next couple of days, I’ll be sharing with you practical principles of suing for peace in this area of matrimony; drawing copiously from our experience in the last one year.
There’s so much to learn. Stay tuned.
Your brother,
Peniela E. Akintujoye.
©️Peniela Eniayo, Akintujoye| hello@lovestraighttalks.com
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