Sometimes my mother would ask, in a not-happy voice, “Who was your servant last year?” I knew the answer and she knew I knew. We all knew, my father and brother and I. Mom was our servant, the person who did everything for us, every day.
Last year and all the years I could remember, Mom was in the kitchen in the morning, making our breakfasts and in the kitchen after school, making our dinner.
While we were at school, she was taking care of us, too, shopping for groceries and washing clothes and cleaning the house. Plus all the other tasks which I can’t list here because they were invisible to me.
Once in a while—maybe Mother’s Day or her birthday—the three of us would make breakfast for Mom which was very simple because she only had toast and coffee. “It tastes wonderful!” she would exclaim which puzzled us.
“It’s just a piece of toast,” we said.
“But someone else made it,” she said.
I didn’t understand this until I became the Mom of a household, until I became the servant. We could have made her toast every week, but we didn’t. I regret that.
