AN ONLOOKER'S VIEW

by Yelena Chakiridi

The way things turned out, I work far away from my home. You get to hear just about everything in a bus full of people, which takes a whole half-hour to reach the metro! You hear various fates and fortunes, some very useful advice, the latest news and rumors, and generally speaking, the gospel truth about the lives of the ordinary people who have quite simply disappeared from the television screen, where Batman, Rambo, the Terminator, policemen and vampires vie for monopoly on all the channels, competing moreover with such modern horrors as "Traffic Police", "Crime", "The Most Notorious Crimes of the Century", and a multitude of game shows which demonstrate our stupidity, foolishness and triviality. Films "about life" are no longer being made since in the minds of the producers, life is all about racketeering, contract killings, power struggle, etc. It is true that some truth occasionally squeaks out from the radio, but even then some zealous journalist will rush to give out a hot tidbit which is unsubstantiated and thus distorted, for which our diplomacy not too far across the border will have to pay the price. In general I prefer the analytical view of modern life, of the people in the bus - I repeat "the people", and not the government, to the broadcasts of Kisilyev and Shenderovich. Here the view of life is not clouded over by anything: not by the influence of the boss, or the owner of the mass media, nor by fear of a powerful opponent. Here you are not instantly fired for free thinking, like Shakhrai with his mustache, and you will not have mineral water poured all over you. In the worst scenario they will swear at you using such language that you will be at a loss for an answer. This drives the point home. It was in such a bus that a conversation between two women forced me to stop and think.

The conversation was about their grown children who had their families of their own. The only difference was that while one had a daughter, the other had a son. Each of them was dissatisfied with their children's family relationships. They had in common the fact that they had brought their children up on their own, without husbands, and things had been difficult. Now after all those years of joyless existence, they wanted some small token of compensation from their children. Due to inertia or possibly the fact that they lived their own lives through the lives of their children, they continue to travel frequently to their children's families to do the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking, taking food along with them. They tried to raise their grandchildren and continued to live vicariously through the interests of their own grownup children. All in all it was the typical single parent family. In their conversation regarding their respective son and daughter-in-law, dissatisfaction poured forth. The girl's mother had a clear-cut list of complaints: he drinks, he beats her and doesn't give her any money; she did not bother with any fine points. The boy's mother was also stereotypical: her daughter-in-law was not the kind that her marvelous son needed, she forces him to go shopping, to go to parents' meetings - and what did she think up next - her son came home tired after work and she told him: I have been working too, and I am tired, today you can cook the dinner for once. It's a good thing that I was around.

She forgave him everything. Her own mother had lived her entire life without a husband, silently condemning her son-in-law for getting drunk and running around, she groveled openly before him, running to the store to buy beer, trying to accommodate him in every possible way. She would side with him when the argument became heated, and after the divorce, she threw herself into the service of a new male idol - her grandson.

Vovochka junior grew up spoiled, overfed, unencumbered by any kind of boy's work. Mental lassitude and the absence of desire to study any of the sciences led to the fact that, following the army, after entering the institute he abandoned his studies without taking the workers' evening school exams. Things did not work out with his work until he took an office security job, where he was not badly paid and he didn't have to do or think about anything.

According to the mother and grandmother, no girl was good enough for Vovochka. Grandma dreamed of a wife for Vovochka who would be domesticated, would feed and clothe Vova well, and take charge of everything. Valentina's dream was a nave starry-eyed girl who would force her son to study, to read and go to the theater. Vovochka preferred less sophisticated women and "getting them quickly into bed". For that reason his first wife had an excellent figure, fair skin and was very healthy looking, but didn't know too much about life. She lived with him for no more than a year, then went off and dumped Vova, to the crowning joy of both women, but not to the benefit of the children. He had simply not been taught about housework. Why should he wash his dirty dishes or socks when there were two women in the family? It is interesting that both the grandmother and the mother talked about their husbands and shared the same view, reproaching them for not doing elementary tasks around the house.

Our daily life is not easy, and a man should not be ashamed to mop the floor or cook dinner. An understanding of the sharing of household tasks has to be established by the mother, especially if she is raising her son as a single parent. You will then see references to evil mothers-in-law disappear, and men will begin to show some respect for their wives' difficult second shift in the kitchen.

The problem of a son being raised by his mother in a single parent family is far from simple or straightforward. There could be excessive adoration of the child being raised, due to unfulfilled love or the transfer of hatred for the husband and the entire male gender onto the son.

The saddest thing is that the single parent family often serves as a model for the next single parent family, especially since the number of single parent families is constantly growing, although the value of the single parent family and the need for them is recognized all over the world.

Stuck in traffic jams as far as the Kievskaya metro, we crawled in, 45 minutes later. With a smile, a handsome broad-shouldered man aged around forty picked up the bags of the lady who was traveling with me under the code name "mother-in-law". "Mother, you should not be carrying such heavy things at your age. We have worn ourselves out waiting for you. Irina has baked a cake." The mother of the daughter let out a weary sigh and dragged her own heavy bags to the metro. Moscow